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For those new to desktop publishing, only one question needs answering when considering which package to buy: does it outclass MS Publisher 2000, which took the Editor's Choice award in PCW's March software group test?
The first change in this version of Serif Page Plus is in the way the wizards work. A template browser provides a good look at what's available - select a template category from a list on the left and the options are previewed in thumbnails on the right. The quality hasn't improved though, and while you might be happy with the party invites, this stuff won't do much for your business image.
With your template opened you enter choices in a wizard panel to the right of the editing window. With business templates this typically consists of company details, document title and colour scheme. Once you've entered these details, they are usefully saved for automatic entry the next time you use a wizard.
The wizard panel sits in a tabbed window called the Studio Bar that you can access at any time to make retrospective changes. Other occupants of the Studio Bar are the colours palette, colour schemes, text, lines, gallery and portfolio panels. There's a good range of colour schemes, each consisting of five swatches. They aren't always applied to the template particularly intelligently, however. On the price list for example, the same colour is used for both the body text and the graphic at the top of each page when there are other, unused colours available.
You can edit the schemes and swatches on the colour palette and web colours through a colour manager tabbed panel. This also allows you to add individual Pantone, spot and process colours to the palette. One good feature is the tint panel at the bottom that displays percentage tints of the currently selected colour.
The text panel displays a scrolling list of text style sheets at the top, and underneath, a list of all available fonts, each displayed in its own face. As with the colours, style sheets can be edited by right-clicking within the palette to access the text-style palette. This is a little clunky as you have to pull up additional dialog boxes to edit character attributes, spacing and alignment, tabs, drop caps and so on.
Applying styles is simple enough though - just highlight the text, then click on the style, or drag and drop. A keyboard shortcut would have made a good alternative.
The Gallery consists of 3D text effects, logos, mastheads, background, flashes, coupons and so on, that you can drag and drop onto the current publication. You can also quickly ungroup objects and edit them separately.
Text and graphics handling has been greatly improved. There are no fewer than 27 new graphic shape tools, including triangles, stars, polygons, lightning bolts and jewels, and the standard text frame has been joined by 18 not-so-standard shapes including ovals, round-cornered boxes, polygons and hearts. When you draw a text frame, the same dialog box based wizard as in version 5 (or one very like it) lets you select column, margin and border options.
For those with little or no experience of web design and production, Page Plus' web wizards will provide a quick, if not aesthetic solution. There is a library of 600 animated GIFs - mostly cartoon-style animations - and you can also insert sound and video clips, Java applets and HTML code, although none of these are provided.
Other improvements include support for spot and process colour printing using a professional print wizard, and multiple documents. The excellent Logo Plus and Table Plus remain in their version 5 format, now included on an old fly-out tool along with the calendar and Draw Plus applets.
Better than MS Publisher 2000? No. But a big improvement on a package that still has a lot to offer.
Contact Serif SPC 0800 376 7070
See also:
All Desktop Publishing (DTP)
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