Product Reviews

Judging by the number of Web sites out there, designing an exciting page can't be that hard, can it? Well, it depends on your software. If you're determined, you can produce a decent Web site using nothing more than Windows's Notepad text editor. For most of us though, life is too short for this approach. A dedicated Web editor can make life a lot easier and leave you to concentrate on making your site look pretty, rather than getting bogged down in the technical stuff.

WebPlus 7 comes from Serif, who know a thing or two about budget graphics and design software. This version carries on the tradition of being well thought-out and easy to use. There are good toolbars that cover operations like inserting objects, saving and previewing files, as well as a big gallery pane down on the right called the Studio. This gives access to WebPlus's decent range of colour schemes, fills and pre-defined logos.

As you'd expect from a package like this, you don't have to start your creation from scratch - there are loads of wizards to take care of the overall style, that you can then simply customise as you wish. There aren't any dazzling displays of originality here, but the options are mercifully free of some of the cheesy layouts that you get from lesser software.

Of course, design is one thing, but a Web site is useless without decent

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content, and WebPlus has some pretty powerful text-entry tools. For starters, text is all entered in frames. Small amounts can be typed straight into the frame, but for more substantial passages you can use Write-Plus - a half-decent word processor. What's more, you can flow text from one frame to another or even between pages if you really want to confuse people.

Adding pictures is simple. Either add photos and other graphics from external files, or use the QuickShape tool to draw basic shapes like stars and circles. Once added to the page, you can further modify both photos and shapes -changing their colour, applying a gradient fill or using the transparency function. This option is especially powerful, as it also applies to text boxes, and it gives a design freedom more akin to desktop publishing than Web graphics.

This link with DTP is further established by WebPlus's page management. You can design a master page to use as a template for all other pages. In DTP, this helps produce a consistent publication, but for Web pages it's also a great way of creating a navigation bar that's consistent throughout your site.

My only disappointment, was that a way of creating 'rollover' buttons (links that change colour or shape when the mouse hovers over them) had been overlooked. You can create them yourself if you know how to use JavaScript, but it would be nice to have some kind of support included.

That said, WebPlus's true flexibility only becomes evident when you save your pages. Unlike most other Web design software, WebPlus has pretty much ditched the 'traditional' HTML approach. Instead, it has opted for a clever combination of images and some newer HTML features. But be warned: these may not work if visited by people using older browsers. This may put you off if you're designing a serious business site, but WebPlus's dynamic options and non-techie approach make it a pretty good choice for beginners.