Adobe InDesign CS5 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide highlights the important new features, as well as covering the ones readers have relied on in previous versions of InDesign. Complete coverage of InDesign CS5's new features includes: tools for interactive documents, including the new animation panel; simplified object selection; multiple page sizes; track text changes; new layers panel, live captions; production enhancements, and print to digital capability. Using the task-based, visual approach that readers count on in the Visual QuickStart Guides, this volume introduces readers to all aspects of InDesign CS5. Users will learn how to create and automate documents, import and style text and objects, manage long documents, export files for a wide variety of purposes, and much more.

Welcome to the InDesign cs5 Visual QuickStart Guide, my eighth version of the book. From its humble start, InDesign is now the primary application for desktop publishing and page layout. I feel very lucky to have been working with and teaching InDesign since its very fi rst beta. In fact, this is the only third-party book that has had editions for all versions of InDesign.

If you have used any of the other Visual QuickStart Guides, you will fi nd this book to be similar. Each chapter is divided into diff erent sections that deal with a specifi c topic — usually a set of tools or similar commands. For instance, the chapter on text has sections on creating text frames, typing text, selecting text, and so on.

Each of the sections contains numbered exercises that show you how to perform a specifi c technique. As you work through the steps, you gain an under standing of the technique or feature. The illustrations help you judge if you are following the steps correctly.

I’ve also sprinkled sidebars, printed in gray boxes, throughout the chapters. Some of these sidebars give you a bit of history or background for a specifi c feature. Other times, I’ve written out humorous stories about desktop publishing. These sidebars are the same little stories and anecdotes I tell my students in the classes I teach.

Strictly speaking, you don’t have to work through the book in the same order as it is printed. If you want to learn more about  imported images, you can skip right over tothat chapter.

However, the book is organized in the same order that I run my InDesign beginner classes. We start with the document setup, then move to basic text, color, and so on. It’s just as if you were sitting in one of my classes. The only thing you won’t see is a lunch break.