Others say...

"Adobe needs to hire proofreaders"
We're not talking, mispelling words here, we're talking BIG errors in copy. Instructional errors. On one early lesson, we're told to open a file they supply on their accompanying disk as Lesson 02>example_page.html, which DOES come on the disk. Then, a few pages later, we're told to go back to what we were working on in our last exercise, but if we closed it, to open recent>example_file.html. Did I miss something? Where did example_file.html come from? According to their illustrations, it looks like they are referring to the one called "page.html", yet we're left hunting for "file.html". Eventually one realizes, after some head-scratching and checking their disk, that there is NO example_file.html, only page.html. Wow! is this a huge proofreading error or what? And this is only in Lesson 2. I'm ready to send the book back to them and ask for a refund. One wonders how many more huge errors are to come in the next 200 pages. Web design is about being accurate, and I am also well-versed in InDesign, so this is inexcusable. (and some prior web experience) They also do not provide diagrams showing the names of all the icons they refer to in various "panel groups" or "status bars" etc. etc. If the reason for omitting them is because Mac and PC interfaces are very different, then publish two books. Maybe Peachpit has a good one for Mac users....

"Class Room In A Book...Indeed!"
I've used "class room in a book" for lots of different softwares that I've learned over the years. I've always enjoyed using the format to learn a software. I only wish they would come up with "class 2", "class 3", etc. for the next stage of learning. It's a good book and worth it's cost for sure! Only be sure that you need "basic" understanding of whatever course you are buying because that's what these books deliver.

"Good for the complete beginner"
I'm rating this book a bit higher than the other reviewers because it is fitting my needs. I have no previous experience with PageMaker and only the most fragile grasp of desktop publishing principles. Therefore, I need a book that says "This is the text tool. Click on the text tool. This is how you view panels. Click on the panel." Even InDesign for Dummies is too advanced for me since it assumes the user has some experience with Adobe products.

So this book does exactly what I need it to do -- it provides lessons made up of simple bits of info and hands-on step-by-step instruction.

"Guided tour, not tutorial"
I'm reviewing the second printing (published mid-July 2007), which has many fewer errors than the first printing. There were only two or three spots where I couldn't get the result in the book, and I wasn't sure if that was my fault or the book's.

InDesign is conceptually a simple program: you collect all your content, plop it down on pages, and drag it around until you are happy with the result. The complication comes from the zillions of settings and treatments for the objects. This book is less a tutorial than a guided tour showing you how to use some of these settings.

One weakness of the book is that it deals primarily with very short documents (one to a few pages), and even on the multipage documents the exercises usually only work on one page in isolation. For this kind of document I would usually use Adobe Illustrator and not a layout program. The place where you really need layout is for multipage documents with a lot of text that flows from page to page (magazine articles, newsletters), and with book-length documents where organizing the work and using stylesheets becomes critical. Chapter 11 deals with a book-length document, although it doesn't deal with these issues.

A related weakness is that the focus is on specific features and not the overall look. The book is tactical rather than strategic. You can argue that strategy is a designer issue and not part of learning the program, but I would like to have seen more emphasis on planning the document and setting up styles. In most cases you start out with an existing layout and start populating it with content, and never deal with the overall look of the document.

The CD-ROM includes the lesson materials, and a few short video tutorials from lynda dot com. One minor gripe is that, unlike other CIB books, this one does not give the estimated times for each lesson.

Overall I felt the book was lightweight. I certainly did not get the in-depth knowledge that I got from working through the Photoshop CIB book. However, it does give you a good survey of the program's capabilities, and is well-organized and well-written.

"Poor work from Adobe"
I purchased this book to learn Indesign CS3. I should say that I know Photoshop quite well so I have a good feel for many of the basics of the program.
I tossed up whether to buy this book or another quite good book on the same topic. I went with this book as I thought that as the author was Adobe, it would be the better of the two.
How wrong I was. This book is very poor. It is full of mistakes that waste so much of your time trying to determine if is you that have made a mistake in following the instructions, or if the book is at fault. After many wasted hours I can confirm that the book is full of errors. Adobe must have quickly pulled this book together from a previous version (CS2) without checking whether it is still relevant or correct for CS3.
There are much better books out there. I am going back to buy that other book. This book is going in the trash!