Review: InDesign CS3 gets faster, streamlined, better
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Apr 16, 2007 at 6:00am
By Aaron Lee and Dennis Sellers
Quark has revitalized its efforts to pump up QuarkXPress in recent years, but Adobe’s InDesign continues to go head to head with the long-time professional publishing software. And though, with his newspaper background, Dennis is a Quark veterans, InDesign CS3 software, the latest version of its professional page layout program, is certainly a contender in this arena.
One of the best things about the latest version is that it’s a Universal Binary application, runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. This, like most of the improvements in the latest version, are designed offer better performance and seed boosts. In fact, InDesign CS3 is loaded with enhancements to streamline and speed design, editing and production of documents of just about any length. We found it was impressively zippy on our 24-inch iMac with 2GB of RAM. And you won’t want to plan on skimping on the RAM to use with InDesign CS3—or any of the Creative Suite 3 apps, for that matter.
In conjunction with the speed boosts, InDesign sports a streamlined interface that overcomes the “palette sprawl” of previous versions. The interface is better organized, and you can collapse most palettes down to single square icons. And the main tool palette is now available in one or two-column options, further freeing up some desktop real estate.
Despite the interface tweaks, InDesign CS 3 is still familiar enough that there’s no extensive learning curve involved. Unless you want to really customize things with the Edit Menu option, which lets you choose what appears and what doesn’t in the menus—and even how they look.
Productivity features including Multi-file Place, expanded Quick Apply, Advanced Find/Change, and fast frame fitting, eliminate time consuming and repetitive design tasks. We’re especially found of the Multi-file Place dialog, which lets you choose multiple files and place each one of them where you’d like without having to jump back to the Place dialog. You can cycle through the selected files using arrow keys. What’s more, you can now double-click on a graphic frame to select its content—such as double-clicking a text frame to edit the text. Quick Apply, a box that you could pop up from the Control palette to choose text styles by typing their names, has been beefed up from its previous wimpy self. Now you can access needed attributes, commands and scripts as you wish.
Table and cell styles let you format an entire table or apply design to a regional area, such as a header or footer. Standards-based XHTML export to Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 from InDesign CS3 enables print content to be repurposed for web publishing, something that’s increasingly important in our Internet-centric world.
A built-in XHTML export to Adobe Digital Editions allows InDesign CS3 users to directly generate dynamic, reflow-centric content for Adobe’s new Rich Internet Application for reading and managing digital publications. The addition of automated bullets and numbering and text variables provides tools for creating and maintaining design consistency within long documents. Dynamic generation of page layouts with formatted text and graphics can now be accomplished by applying rules to imported XML content, enabling publishers to automate the creation of richly designed and personalized documents.
InDesign CS3 also offers some tweaks that will appeal to Photoshop users. It now has a full Object Effects dialog, matching Photoshop’s Layer Styles, so you can adorn an item with a variety of effects. You can now more freely experiment with designs by applying familiar Photoshop visual effects such as bevel and emboss, as well as satin, with full support for blending modes, opacity, and other options. Finer transparency controls allow you to independently adjust settings on an object’s fill, stroke or text for more visual and nuanced design.
We would have liked for Adobe to have added interactive smart guides like Illustrator CS 3 has, as well as freeform guides, but it didn’t happen. Maybe next time. But for now, if you’re looking for some heavy-duty document-design software …. choosing between InDesign and QuarkXPress has gotten a whole lot harder.
Adobe InDesign CS3 will be available through Adobe Authorized Resellers and the Adobe Store[/url]. Estimated street price for the Adobe InDesign CS3 is US$699 and $249 for Adobe InCopy CS3. Adobe InDesign CS3 Server will also be available to qualified Adobe developer partners in the second quarter of 2007 with pricing information available through qualified third parties. For more detailed information about features, upgrade policies, pricing, and international versions go here. InDesign CS3 also be purchased as part of the Creative Suite 3 bundles.
Macsimum rating: 8 out of 10.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
