A Review of Desktop Author

Desktop Author is a desktop publishing program that allows you to create eBooks, brochures, catalogs, photo albums, manuals, textbooks, and more.  The full program costs $233 (American) and can be downloaded from their website (desktopauthor.com). 

I have been using the program for several months now, so I wanted to tell you all how I like it.

Positives

·         Very good for relatively small projects.  If you are looking for a program to design brochures or presentations or something of that nature, this program will do very well for you.  It has plenty of features that will help you create a solid item.

·         Relatively cheap.  At just over $200, Desktop Author is quite affordable.  It is far cheaper than Adobe PhotoShop or even Corel Draw. 

·         There are plenty of templates.  If you need some help getting started on your project, this program offers plenty of templates to set you on your way. 

·         Multi language capability.  There are many different languages available for you to use with this software.  If you are making products that will be used by a variety of people, this feature will really come in handy.

·         Great form templates.  If you want to use this software to create tests, you will be very happy with Desktop Author.  It comes with some great forms that make it easy to create your documents.

Negatives

·         Not good for large projects.  At least in my experience, this program is not easy to use if you are developing large projects such as eBooks. 

·         No text import functions.  It can be quite frustrating when there is no way to import work you have already done, and you have to redo it.

·         No multi platform support.  You cannot use this software on Linux or Mac computers, and the program does not support any documents produced with those OS’s.

·         No drag and drop.  I have become accustomed to dragging and dropping components during a project, but I had to break that habit when using this program.  That was quite frustrating, and I never really got used to it.

·         Templates are not particularly easy to use.  Although there are a variety of templates available, they are sometimes quite tough to incorporate. 

All in all, Desktop Author is a very good program when you are designing a small project.  I used it several times to create brochures, and I was very pleased with the results.  However, if you are designing a large project, you may want to go in a different direction.