VISIO 2000 Visual Insight

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1576105326 ISBN 13: 9781576105320

Publisher: Coriolis Group, 2000

Visio 2000 Visual Insight is the only book to expose the exciting capabilities of this useful program in an easy and visual manner. The logical screen-by-screen format walks you through Visio's many facets while encouraging you to explore some intermediate features.

Review:

You can't beat Visio 2000 for general-purpose graphics work. The program rules the roost when it's time to create flow charts, technical diagrams, and any of many other kinds of pictures that can significantly increase the clarity of reports and presentations. Visio 2000 Visual Insight shows the Visio novice how to use the program productively and reveals how to create good-looking examples of the most popular kinds of business and technical graphics.

The basic idea of the Visual Insight format is that it's better to show the reader how to do something than to try to explain the process in words. So, readers get a series of one- and two-page spreads, each containing the steps to follow to achieve a particular effect. In most cases, the text of each step appears next to an image of the step being carried out--a particular dialog box or a partially completed drawing. The reader is never unsure of what he or she should be seeing. One problem is that some of the numbered steps aren't really steps at all but rather statements of things that should happen as a result of earlier steps. But don't let that stop you. It's easy to locate common tasks and quickly figure out how to accomplish them, with a minimum of time spent decoding prose. --David Wall

Topics covered: The basics of Visio 2000, followed by its specific features for line, shape, text, and stencil manipulation. Concluding chapters are case studies, which guide the reader through the creation of a floor plan, an org chart, and a timeline.

About the Author:

David Plotkin (Walnut Creek, CA) has published over 1,000 articles in various periodicals and is the author of Using Lotus Approach for Windows (Que). In addition, he has co-authored The FileMaker Pro Bible (IDG) and The Windows 98 Technical Reference Guide (Prima). He has also designed training courses to make learning computers fun for novices.