imcath

For those us who do NOT have to write books consisting of thousands of pages, it can be needlessly overwhelming. There needs to be something less elementary than iPages, but less difficult to learn and master than inDesign. I was hoping Publisher would fill that void.

I, too find Publisher to be very much like Designer, but am disappointed that is the case. As a long time user of Apple's iPages program, I was really looking for a text-based program that could do what iPages does, only a little better and more intuitively. Instead, it's having to work within a designer program, with way more options and features than I could ever need, use or learn. I have to click back from tool to tool just to select or move a text box. I hate that everything is on a different layer. I have to have a layer filter just to make a gradient. I couldn't even find a way to make the gradient run vertically vs. horizontally, without rotating the box itself. I was so looking forward to a better page-layout program, but sadly, Publisher won't be luring me away from iPages. It's too complex for what I need it to do. Admittedly, I'm still new to Designer as well, but I'm not sure what Publisher offers that I couldn't do with Designer.