Publishing Software - which course should I take
 

I am about to go on garden leave, leading to end of year redundancy, from my job of 14 years in which I have used very specialist / industry specific publishing software.

So, given the lack of vacancies in my current field, I am looking to expand my publishing skills and become more generically employable. I have noticed that Dreamweaver crops up alot on the job sites, and as web publishing is the way forward, is this a good application to learn? I have made basic enquiries about a home study course, but it is pitched at 280 hours study, so would take longer than my garden leave to get up to speed and I really want to be back in decently paid work in the new year.

Is there any other publishing software out there which is also used by multiple industries that I should look into before I commit the time and money to the Dreamweaver course? Doesn't have to be web publishing, any form of electronic publishing that can be migrated across different industries would be of interest.

Thanks in advance :)

What exactly do you mean by publishing software? My interpretation is that perhaps you mean <shudder> Desktop Publishing (DTP) / Typesetting. The shudder is simply because I'm an ex-typesetter and DTP was a dirty word, sort of amateur vs professional. Somewhat pretentious I know, but that was how it was when I was working as a typesetter.

Anyway, if we're on the same page about what publishing means then software wise the big two would be Quark's QuarkXPress and Adobe's Indesign. I've always been a big XPress fan, it's what I primarily used when typesetting back in the day, but when writing software documentation I've been using InDesign for the past few years.

Quark also has full on enterprise solutions, DPS (Dynamic Publishing Solution), QPS (Quark Publishing System), XML Author and QuarkXPress Sever.

I'm not too sure what Adobe's similar offerings would be, I'd think the Creative Suite Master Collection would probably include all the apps needed to publish and edit things, but unsure how it compares to Quark's system.

This type of publishing is, I think, more geared to traditional print and probably online PDF medium than a true web based medium, or that is my take on it. I'd not be shocked if the Quark DPS system however will handle print and web based things, much like the CS suite that includes dreamweaver.

If web publishing is the way to go then Adobe does have a Web specific CS package, and that includes dreamweaver, photoshop, illustration and a few other things and if you're going to do the web side of things, that'd be the one to look at.

When it comes to web stuff, design is just one aspect, sites can rely on more than just flash and such like, for example, this forum could look super snazy, but it's more than just the look, behind it is php code and an sql database to drive things, thus you may wish to possibly consider if you want to look into that side of things as well, for example, you'll design a nice form to submit information, but where is that stored and accessible to those who you're designing the site for?
It could be an email sent to someone, or, more useful for them, put into a database and they could have an interface designed to access and use that submitted information.