October 1998

The QuarkXPress 4.0 Book Web page is a source for and link to many XPress materials. The Tips and Tricks section includes the keyboard shortcut for accessing special tools not displayed in the Tool palette.

The QuarkXPress 4 Book, by David Blatner, Peachpit Press, $34.95

David Blatner's latest QuarkXPress book is not just another book on QuarkXPress. Nor is it an XPress bible. It doesn't even come with a CD-ROM. It's an intelligent and all- encompassing cross-platform guide to using XPress in a print and screen production environment. As in his other XPress books, Blatner explains everything about how this complex program works, even functions you didn't know were there until you needed them. The book is especially helpful in discussing 4.0's new long document features and color management system.

The new clipping paths feature is discussed (really taught) with reference to working with bitmapped images in Quark (Anyone not using Photoshop, get out of this business), and the chapter on printing will give you the vocabulary and smarts to deal with your service bureau so that your pages will print properly. If nine hundred pages of brilliant and breezy information isn't enough, purchasing the book gives you access to the book's Web site where updates, downloads, and tips and tricks are posted. This is probably the only book on the market that comes packaged with the author!

Whether you're using XPress on a single machine or an international network, you need this book. If the 4.0 manual is giving you nightmares, The QuarkXPress 4.0 Book will guarantee sweet dreams of pages that print and display properly. David Blatner is still the best thing to happen to QuarkXPress.

The Web Design Wow! Book, by Jack David and Susan Merritt, Peachpit Press, $39.95 with CD-ROM.

Sumptuous, stylish, perhaps even swank, this well- (if occasionally over-) written and profusely illustrated book is a perfect vademecum for the website designer who can shrug off details like code onto the shoulders of a nameless peasantry, and whose clients' intended readers have more bandwidth than God.

Andy Sterner , Principal, Of-Counsel Systems arsesq@of-counsel.com

Photoshop 5 for Windows for Dummies, by Deke McClelland, IDG Books, $19.99. (Also available for Macintosh)

When nice guy, Deke McClelland goes up against big, scary Photoshop 5, guess who wins? The reader who has no idea how to turn an average image into a work of art and for whom the Magnetic Lasso tool is a weapon used to kill painlessly. There's a lot of good information here presented in a non-threatening way that users new to Photoshop will appreciate and benefit from It's also a good place to start if you want to understand the new features in version 5 and find the user manual less than helpful.

Director Multimedia Studio, Official Macromedia Training, Macromedia Press $49.95

The combination of book and CD makes learning the program seem easy. The reader can watch teachers from Macromedia demonstrate how to put together projects over and over again until they understand them. The CD has complete demo versions of all the software you will need to work on the projects demonstrated on the CD and in the book.

Macromedia Lingo Studio, Tony Bové, Kurt Cagle, and Cheryl Rhodes Random House $45.00

This book gives the reader an introduction to Lingo programming. The book explains scripting techniques with tutorials and examples from CD-ROM titles, Web animation, kiosks, and multimedia control applications. The CD contains excerpts of professional projects as well as a copy of the entire book as an Acrobat file.