Adobe InDesign CS3 review

In the 1990s Adobe's PageMaker, the original DTP program, was edged out by QuarkXPress.

Adobe eventually ditched it and started again from scratch. InDesign has a notably fresh feel, as if it's just getting into its stride rather than struggling to keep up, and it looks fitter with each release.

In CS3 (version 5), the user interface has been tidied up, with InDesign's many palettes arranged on the right-hand side. You can customise these and move them around if you like, but the new pop-out structure makes it easier to keep the screen clear of clutter, while still allowing you to get at what you want without having to hunt for it. The floating Control palette isn't divided into tabs like QuarkXPress 7's, but just shows all the options relevant to the item and tool selected. This works fine, although it's long enough to disappear off the edge of smaller screens. As before, it's very easy to switch the editing window between showing guides, grids and other layout furniture, or just your page as it'll look when printed, and to reduce the display quality if you need to work faster, although InDesign rarely feels slow.

The already-impressive soft shadows have been rolled into a full Object Effects dialog that is almost identical to the Photoshop equivalent. This gives you lots of creative options, including glows, bevels and embosses. All that's missing is the ability to edit and adjust photos in situ. This is left to Photoshop, while warping and advanced vector-editing are left to Illustrator.

Nesting is a powerful idea that's exclusive to InDesign. You can create a master page based on another, enabling more organised templating for long or repeat publications such as catalogues and magazines. Paragraph styles can contain character styles so, for example, the opening paragraph of a story can automatically have the first three words set in a different font, size and colour. Table styles make it even easier to format an imported table with just a few clicks.

CS3 has lots of new automation features. You can import multiple text items or images simultaneously and then carry them around, attached to your cursor, while you place them where you want them. An expanded Find/Change function lets you alter text or graphics throughout a document. There's more advanced scripting and XML support (both input and output), as well as integration with Dreamweaver if you're working on both web and print content. Finally, you can now place one InDesign layout within another and track changes to it via the Links palette. This means another user can work on the document at the same time.

InDesign stakes the best claim to being the future of DTP. It's not cheap, but it's worth the price, and even better value as part of the Creative Suite bundle with Photoshop, Illustrator and other options.