In this section:
Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 is a layout program for creating a vast assortment of publications. As you start working with it, you’ll find that Publisher is a very scalable program—that is, it’s quite easy to use when you’re creating newsletters, greeting cards, or flyers and printing them on your printer or e-mailing them. However, because Publisher is powerful enough to include commercial-printing features such as trapping, overprinting, and setting spot colors, you’ll have the opportunity to venture into the complexities of professional layout features if you really want to embark on that adventure! However, in this section of the book, we’ll deal only with the basics; if you want to go further, we trust that you’ll find the right sources to guide you.
Perhaps the first thing you’ll notice about Publisher 2007 is that it looks different from most of the other Office programs in that it uses a menu layout and multiple toolbars instead of the Ribbon and the single Quick Access toolbar. Of course, if you’ve used Publisher before, you’re already familiar with this interface. Otherwise, the best way to get to know Publisher is to start it up and look around. You’ll see dozens of different ready-made designs, and all you have to do is choose a design and insert your own content. If you’re creative and you’d prefer to design your own publications from scratch, go right ahead.
When you work in Publisher, you work with objects. What, exactly, is an object? Let’s say you want to insert some text. In Publisher, you’ll need to create a container for it—a text-box object—and you’ll place your text inside that object. To include a picture, you’ll create a picture-frame object, and you’ll place your picture inside that object. Some objects, however, come with their own containers: When you insert a piece of clip art or WordArt, for example, it goes onto the page as a Clip Art or WordArt object, already nestled in its own container. On a larger scale, each page of your publication is a container for all the objects you place on it. After you’ve created these self-contained objects, you can move each one around and/or resize it to create your arrangement on the page. The result is a polished publication that your readers see as an integrated whole rather than a collection of separate objects.
