Reviews (11)

FrameMaker 7 Classroom in a Book
This book is essentially an excellent learning book for FrameMaker. It covers most of unstructered FrameMaker's features. Adobe should be ashamed for publishing their Classroom in a book series with perfect binding. No learning product should be perfect bound because the book does not stay open to the page you need unless you destroy the binding.
Not that bad a book
I don't know why all these reviewers hate the book. Granted the instructions to install the fonts were wrong and sometimes the fonts the lessons require aren't there, but I can live with that. The instructions are right and the lessons work. Yes I wish it was in color, but I can live with B&W too. I've done eleven lessons and have enjoyed the book very much. I love the power of FrameMaker and think the book is good. I think Adobe/Peachpit press has gotten its act together since these reviews were written. The book is worth getting now.

Update for Adobe Framemaker 7 CD
I contacted Peachpit Press and received a new CD for this book in two days. I am working through the lessons. I have always liked this format for learning Adobe products. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer - Internet    3. Computer Books: General    4. Computers    5. Desktop Publishing    6. Desktop Publishing - General    7. Electronic Publishing    8. Internet - General    9. Computer Programming    10. Computer graphics software    11. Computers / Electronic Publishing    12. Desktop publishing software    13. Publishing on the Internet   

Reviews (1)

Interesting topics but disorganized
I would recommend O'Keefe's "The Complete Reference, Framemaker 7" instead in almost all areas.
Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Art    3. Art & Art Instruction    4. Computer Books: General    5. Computers    6. Desktop publishing    7. General    8. Typography   

Reviews (3)

Would be better if the sample files were available
No doubt about it, this is a very good book for learning about FrameMaker's interaction with XML. I agree with the other reviewers: this is way better than the info supplied by Adobe in both the FM manual and in the supplementary PDF's that come with FrameMaker. One caveat: the example files available for download from Apress's Web site (the publisher) don't match the narrative in the book. This may be a great disappointment to you as it was to me. Reading along and looking at the pictures in the book was not the same as exploring live examples -- and possibly using them as the basis for my own XML. Still, there were illustrations provided in the book, and with some imagination, there was information to be gained.

Saved an outrageous amount of time and frustration
Recently I had to use FrameMaker as authoring tool for DoocBook, it was quite a challenging task because it required learning a lot of new stuff. FrameMaker is a powerful and sophisticated tool, with XML capabilities that were build on top of its SGML legacy, so it's a pretty complex beast to learn. This book was just right on the spot; it allowed me to save an outrageous amount of time and frustration. I don't know if it can be valuable for seasoned FrameMaker users, but I am sure it's a great investment if you have to deal with FrameMaker and XML starting from scratch

Debafflement
This is a great introductory crossover text for both xml programmers and FrameMaker users who want a cram course in structured layout. The first third of the book is devoted to FrameMaker for the XML expert-how to set up a document and master pages, create and use style sheets, and manage templates. The rest of the book explains, in clear and concise prose, how to get started with FrameMaker's approach to XML. Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Desktop Publishing    4. Desktop Publishing - General    5. Internet - Web Site Design    6. Programming Languages - XML    7. Computers / Desktop Publishing / General   

Reviews (11)

Out of Print
This book is now out of print. It will be republished as Publishing Fundamentals: Creating Content with FrameMaker 7.

Don't spend money.
I've spent as much time reading this as the one sent from Adobe when I ordered FrameMaker 7.0. Meaning, it's just as useful (or worthless) as the one from Adobe. Too many features are just as cryptic and vague. I've spent hours experimenting just to find exactly how to format this, or how to customize that with their general descriptions--until it actually worked. My most recent unresolved problem had been having to customize the index and table of contents. Their explanations have been too vague for me. Why I must have to spend so much time to decipher this work is beyond me. Although I've worked with computers for over 15 years, I'm not a programmer. I bought this as a reference because I don't know (get it?). I shouldn't have to sit here and decode their work (O'Keefe and Loring's). It's fallen waaay short of my expectations. I'd get my money back if I could.

Complete Reference Frame Maker 7 by O'Keefe and Loring
This work is perfect for anyone seeking to become conversant with the latest software productivity tools. The authors describe products, content creation and sample templates in simple English. They teach how to work with structured documents, manipulate text, formatting and tag methodologies.Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books: General    4. Computer Graphics - General    5. Computers    6. Computers - Desktop Publishing    7. Desktop Publishing - General    8. Desktop publishing    9. Internet - Web Site Design    10. Presentation Software    11. Computers / Desktop Applications / Presentation Software    12. Desktop publishing software    13. Internet languages   

Editorial Review

If you need to convert your large existing Adobe FrameMaker documents into HTML-based documents for the Web or an intranet, check out Read more

Reviews (2)

A good introduction to the process of FM to HTML conversion
Having spent the past three years working in Framemaker, and never havingwritten in HTML, this book served me, at least, as an introduction to HTMLfor Framemaker-users. False advertising in the online synopsis.
I was very excited to see this book listed. For a day and a half I was struggling trying to create a Frame 5.5 template that would satisfy print and html viewing using Frame 5.5's conversion feature. The book stated that it had an entire section devoted to this process. Alas, the book covered a pre-release version of the utility and provided no more information than the sparse Adobe documentation and online help.Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books: Spreadsheets    4. Computer Networks    5. Computer Programming Languages    6. Computers    7. Computers - Desktop Publishing    8. Desktop Publishing - General    9. Desktop publishing    10. HTML (Document markup language    11. HTML (Document markup language)    12. Internet - Web Site Design    13. Programming Languages - General    14. Programming Languages - HTML    15. World Wide Web    16. Computers / Electronic Publishing    17. Desktop publishing software    18. HTML   

Reviews (6)

Drivel
This is not an advanced book, nor is the indexing comprehensive. I would expect that a "power user" would know how to index better.If you attempt to work with multiple dictionaries in FM and then find anything on it within the index - no can do. Writing style is extremely elementary and insulting to a power user (aka other writers). If you can read to the third grade level, you can read this. Much of the information is "fluff," and is not necessary to the teaching. You could cut out 2/3rds and have a useful guide. Skimp ondetails
After following numerous examples in this book, I end up getting a different result as was shown.I believe Framemaker is operating system specific, therefore something that works in the examples using Mac, doesn't work in Unix.The author should of noted this in each of the examples.

Power Users Rejoice!
I use "Framemaker 6" eight hours a day, five days a week.I am a power user. This is the book Ihave been waiting for. It streamlined my everyday procedures and took me step by step uncharted territory I was afraid to use before. Even a power user FM^ can be intimidating. The closest I can come to how I felt afterreading the book is it is like having a personal trainer. I accomplish more with less effort, and my documents look great. I am not kidding, FM6 can stress out, I feel better. When I get backed in a corner I use this book first to resolve my problems.I subscribe to the Adobe Tech support. This book has helped me in situations that had Adobe TS stumped. Irecommend they buy a copy or even better, include it with the software.Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computers    4. Computers - Desktop Publishing    5. Desktop Publishing    6. Desktop Publishing - General    7. Electronic Publishing    8. Computers / Electronic Publishing   

Reviews (10)

Excellent!
I've read some of the previous reviews and couldn't believe that they were not 5's across the board.Several years ago, I had to learn Framemaker very quickly.This book made that possible.Since that time, I've used Framemaker on a day-to-day basis and I still consider _FM_5.5.6_for_Dummies_ to be a very good book.(I use FM 6.)
horrid
I've tried, over and over, to make this book work. But I can't. I'm a beginner and this book makes absolutely no sense, for the most part. If you have no experience with FrameMaker, do not go near this book. O'Keefe seems to have written this thing without much worry about detail or really taking you throug the process of creating documents. This book is a mess and I've been left to look for online tutorials.

not so clear
This book could use some clarity. There's a lot of instruction on how to do a lot of things, but there's never a reason for why some processes are needed. For a beginner, this book isn't as easy as it should be. RoboHELP for Dummies was a phenominal book. This book hardly compares. The author, a technical writer, doesn't break down the why's and I'm left frustrated and starting over. It's too bad there's no real competition for a book like this. I really wish there was a more user friendly FrameMaker tutorial. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Books: Desktop Publish    3. Computers    4. Desktop Publishing    5. Desktop Publishing - General    6. Desktop publishing software    7. Text & document processing: general   

Reviews (4)

Detailed and Clear - Easy to follow for beginners!
Adobe FrameMaker is a powerful tool for putting together a book or a lengthy document where the typical word processing software falls short. Learning FrameMaker, however, proved to be no easy task, because of its many features. Learning Adobe FrameMaker lacks three vital tools.
Learning Adobe FrameMaker lacks three tools that are vital for any beginning writer at my company, which generates thousands of books a year. The missing pieces are: multifile books, indexes, and cross-references. These oversights force me as an instructor to generate my own materials, but as the sole trainer, I have little time for instructional design. I almost discounted purchasing the book for that reason, but the low cost per student convinced me to hang on and fill in the gaps myself. I'm anxious for the so-called "advanced" material--stuff everybody needs from day 1 to work for us!

Learning Adobe FrameMaker lacks three vital tools.
Learning Adobe FrameMaker lacks three tools that are vital for any beginning writer at my company, which generates thousands of books a year. The missing pieces are: multifile books, indexes, and cross-references. These oversights force me as an instructor to generate my own materials, but as the sole trainer, I have little time for instructional design. I almost discounted purchasing the book for that reason, but the low cost per student convinced me to hang on and fill in the gaps myself. I'm anxious for the so-called "advanced" material--stuff everybody needs from day 1 to work for us! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books: Desktop Publish    4. Computers    5. Desktop Publishing    6. Desktop Publishing - General    7. Databases & data structures    8. Text & document processing: general   

Reviews (1)

Good for a reference, but for actually learning....?
To be fair, I'm only halfway through this book at the moment, but I can't really say that I've "learned" anything more than I would have just playing around with the program on my own and using the online help.It doesn't seem to me that there was much thought put into a logical progression from one section to another, building certain skills off of previously-learned skills.Just about every section has a "see page xxx" reference on it, and most of those refer to pages much later in the book.So if you are actually trying to teach yourself, you are constantly skipping forward to successive lessons.In trying to learn tools on page 13, I have to skip forward to page 190.The lessons are just very haphazardly arranged.Also, there are several errors, saying "circle" when the illustration shows a square, typos, bitmapped illustrations.For example, in the lesson on deleting pages, one screen capture shows the author wanting to delete page 255.In the next screen capture, the Framemaker popup window is showing "Deletion of page 256 cannot be undone. OK to continue?"Mostly just boneheaded little things like that, but I would expect more.Like I say in the subject line, this may be better for a quick reference, not so much for actually trying to become competent and confident using FrameMaker.Maybe get this book to introduce yourself to the absolute (and I mean ABSOLUTE) basics, then get another book to actually put those skills to use. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computers    4. Computers - Desktop Publishing    5. Desktop Publishing    6. Desktop Publishing - General    7. Electronic Publishing    8. Hardware - Personal Computers - Macintosh    9. Programming Languages - Visual BASIC    10. Typography    11. Computer Programming    12. Computers / Electronic Publishing    13. Desktop publishing software    14. Internet   

Reviews (3)

Great Resource
I was a self taught FrameMaker user. This book polished my skills and made the entire process more enjoyable.

Getting into Framemaker 6.0 couldn�t be easier.
Framemaker 6.0 is one of those applications whose fame precedes it, making one wish that they had it for all that nitty-gritty work that is such a horrible chore by other means. So you get it, and launch it, and are underwhelmed at a dishwater plain interface more in keeping with some kind of share-ware, and you wonder: `What is this about? Where's all those floating palettes that Adobe love to sprinkle across your screen? Why is a new document placed in that offset window with the zoom controls nicely hidden at its bottom edge ( z Z ), along with a pop-up menu to sort out the document pane? Have I been suckered out of some big bucks, and should have gotten that lovely, nice Indesign 2.0 instead?' Excellent -- Recommended
The task-oriented procedures provided in this book make it an excellent supplement to, or replacement for, the documentation that comes with the FrameMaker product. Ignore the funky-looking font on the cover. Inside the book, the organization, writing, and illustrations are all clear and instructive. Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General   

Reviews (6)

Great Beginner's Book
You'd expect a book about Framemaker, a leading application of tech writers, to be superbly laid out, precise, and clear. This book definitely *is*.I am extremely satisfied with my purchase.And as a result, I have gotten "up to speed" with Framemaker basics in a few weekends. Not all it's quacked uo to be
I bought this book because it was the only FrameMaker 6 book on the market at the time. An elevator for a steep learning curve
Adobe FrameMaker is a high-end product for desktop-publishing professionals and as such does not have a large customer base. If you need to create and design your own books, look no further. You probably have heard that this program has a very steep learning curve. Once you master the mysteries of this complicated and convoluted program, book design will be very easy and time-consuming. The problem is - where to start. Read more

Subjects:  1. Desktop Publishing - General    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computers - Desktop Publishing    4. Electronic Publishing    5. Computers / Electronic Publishing    6. Computer Books And Software    7. Adobe FrameMaker    8. Computers    9. Desktop Publishing   

Reviews (2)

Reference you can depend on
I have this one and also the one for 6.0. I am waiting for the 7.0 version. This is one reference that you can depend on to have the information that you need.

A fast way to learn FrameMaker
This book is one of the clearest-written books I've read to date dealing with FrameMaker 5. I use both the Mac and Windows versions of FrameMaker and find this to be a ready reference guide, far better than the manuals accompanying the software. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books: Desktop Publish    4. Desktop Publishing    5. Desktop publishing software    6. Text & document processing: general   

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books: Desktop Publish    4. Computer programs    5. Desktop Publishing    6. FrameMaker (Computer program)    7. Typography    8. Desktop publishing software   

Reviews (1)

Like all PeachPit books, this one's a winner
This book is much easier to navigate than the FrameMaker manual that comes with the software.Though about one third the length of the manual, I was able to find a couple of features and procedures in the PeachPit boook that I was unable to find in Adobe's own manual.I recommend all of the PeachPit books highly. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Desktop Publish    2. Computers - Desktop Publishing    3. Desktop Publishing    4. Desktop Publishing - General    5. Typography    6. Desktop publishing software    7. Text & document processing: general   

Editorial Review

FrameMaker 5.5, the newest version of Adobe's desktop publishing tool for long documents, is the featured product in this Classroom in a Book volume from Adobe Press. The first lessons in the book cover basic tasks, such as formatting paragraphs, characters, and color. You also learn how to design pages by working with columns, master pages, and graphics and how to use editing tools such as the Find/Change, Thesaurus, and Spelling Checker. Next the book teaches you how to create and customize tables, work with anchored frames and graphics, add cross-references and footnotes, and make a book file with a table of contents, index, and correct pagination. The last, more advanced lessons cover conditional text, hypertext and Portable Document Format (PDF) output, and Web publishing. Each lesson has clear step-by-step instructions and helpful screen shots and ends with a "Moving on" section that refers you to more in-depth discussions of the relevant material in the FrameMaker user manual. Each lesson also ends with a series of questions that review what you've learned; the answers to the questions are at the back of the book. The bundled CD-ROM has project files for each lesson. The book covers the Windows, Macintosh, and Unix versions of the product. ... Read more

Reviews (24)

Just an Intro
As others have noted, this book doesn't cover everything. On the one hand it's well-written so you can whiz through; on the other hand, about all you're learning is some of the most basic functions. UNKNOWNLANGUAGE
MYHUSBAND BOUGHT YOURBOOKA WEEKAGO AND HAS A LOT OFTROUBLE WITH IT, BECAUSETHE COMPUTER HE'S ON HAS DIFFERENT SYMBOLS THAN THE BOOK DESCRIBES. HE'SHAD TO CHANGE HIS CAREER FROM BEING A MODEL MAKER TO NOW LEARNTHE COMPUTER SIDE OF THINGS. YOU NEED TO COME OUT WITH A BOOK THAT SHOWS THE SYMBOLS TO THE COMPUTER PROGRAM .

Helpful even for veteran Frame users
If you already own or use a copy of FrameMaker at work, and you needadditional skills in using the software, or want to learn more of thepowerful features Frame has to offer, this book will be useful to you. Ican't say how helpful it would be to a new user, but for anyone who's beenmuddling through by learning how to use Frame on their own, this book willteach you many things you don't already know, and will help you createbetter-constructed documents. Remember to practice on documents you createyourself (from scratch) or the lessons won't stick. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books And Software    4. Computer Graphics - General    5. Computers    6. Computers - Desktop Publishing    7. Desktop Publishing    8. Desktop Publishing - General    9. Electronic Publishing    10. Typography    11. Computer graphics software    12. Desktop publishing software   

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books: General    4. Desktop Publishing    5. Typography    6. Desktop publishing software   

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Books: Operating Systems    3. Desktop Publishing    4. Microsoft Windows    5. Text & document processing: general   

Reviews (1)

Slightly out of date?
Unfortunately, When I purchased this book it was acouple of week after Quadralay (the company that produced WebWorks Publisher) released an update version i.e., WWP 7.0 - This book was written for WWP 6.0. There appears to be quite a difference in the two versions. This book was written for 6.0. Although, I did find some parts of it informative.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Desktop Publish    2. Computers / Internet / Web Site Design    3. Electronic publishing    4. Web publishing    5. Web site development    6. Adobe FrameMaker    7. Computers    8. Internet - Web Site Design    9. WebWorks Publisher   

Subjects:  1. Adobe FrameMaker    2. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    3. Computer Books: Desktop Publish    4. Computers - Desktop Publishing    5. Desktop Publishing    6. Desktop Publishing - General    7. Typography    8. UNIX (Computer file)    9. Unix, Unix Linux & Unix TCL/TK   

Subjects:  1. Computers - Desktop Publishing    2. Desktop Publishing - General    3. Computers / General    4. DTP    5. Dokumentenerstellung    6. FrameMaker    7. FrameMaker 7    8. Textverarbeitung    9. technische Dokumentation