Publisher Plus 4+

I upgraded from the Publisher Lite version because I needed to make a lengthy newsletter. This version supports that. However, some days it freezes every few minutes (SAVE OFTEN!) for no apparent reason. It says you can drag and drop to rearrange pages. This doesn’t seem to work for me for whatever reason. It worked once, but now it won’t let me rearrange the pages which is incredibly frustrating. I like the added backgrounds and templates.

UPDATE: Some days it just decides to NOT RESPOND. I’m on a deadline and need to make adjustments to my newsletter, but every time I do one tiny little thing it freezes and is not responding. If you have patience and never have deadlines…great app ;)

While I have only done one project so far, this is a great basic design package, though not without flaws. What should you expect for the price, right? The only major quibble is that the only size for business cards is not the “standard” 2 inch by 3.5 inch that is most commonly used but what I suspect is an ISO or European standard 2.12 inch by 3.35 inch. This is a pain when working with sites like VistaPrint (which only use the 2x3.5 size in their web tools) but can be worked around if needed (you lay it out as though you had a top and bottom margin of 0.13 inches but go right to the edge on the left and right margins then drop the exported PDF right on the VistaPrint design page. Oh, and don’t run you graphics off the ends of the card or you get a white space). It was a disapointement that the “custom page sizing” that was supposed to come with the Plus version wasn’t for design layout page sizes within the application but for printer page sizes which apparently isn’t the same thing. This is odd to me.

The feature I would most like to see are (multiple)vertical and horizontal guides that you could drag from the rulers and use to align objects. They were among my favorite tools in the early versions of PageMaker. A page grid matching the rulers would be nice too.

A big clue should have been their website, which is neither up-to-date nor detail-oriented (lots of errors, dead links, expired promotions. Indicating that quality and a thorough approach is not a priority...)

This app is not nearly as detailed as the original Pages and is not for the poweruser of current Pages.. There are careless typos in the menus. Adjustments in spacing etc. use sliders, with no option of setting a precise number. Templates open in European A4 format and clicking “Letter” or Legal” does not automatically reconfigure the columns, artwork etc.

It is less intuitive and more reliant on experimentation than Pages. (Example: open the menu of all pages, click the page you want to delete and click the “minus” sign - a warning message is displayed: “this choice is irrevocable”. WRONG CHOICE - the page that is deleted is the current page in the work area. Really!?) When the program crashes, the recovery is not current and requires lots of re-do. Moral: Save as you go (Apple has thoroughly spoiled me by making this nearly obsolete…)

I regret not simply purchasing a $$ newsletter template pack for Pages. I have plenty of my own images/artwork so the royalty-free clipart isn’t a draw for me, either.