Product Reviews

When it comes to budget DTP software, Serif has always tried to lead the field and its PagePlus package has succeeded admirably, thanks to being competitively priced, feature-rich and wrapped up in an easy-to-use interface. This new version builds on Serif's earlier success and has been enhanced to offer even greater functionality and flexibility.

With an affordable price tag of just £69.95, you'd think that the program was pitched at the less demanding user, but in fact it's suitable for most people. For the newcomer wanting to thrash out a quick poster for the local playgroup, ease of use is clearly important, and so there are 16 QuickTours to show you both basic and advanced features. In the program itself there are over 300 Wizards to help you create a wide range of document types using default graphics and text. The process of building your own documents is also aided by a range of wizards that guide you through processes such as text and graphics importing, together with tooltips help.

In other ways the program is little changed from the previous version, but that's no bad thing. Obviously, the main function of any DTP program should be to intermingle text and graphics on the page easily, and here PagePlus 5 does very well. Whether you're importing text or placing a graphic, there are wizards to help you through the process. But aside from these basics, this new version has been enhanced in a number of interesting ways.

The program has always been very adept at creating short documents, thanks to very powerful text-formatting options superior to those of Microsoft Publisher or GSP PressWorks. These include the ability to use named text styles which define the basic text specifications, such as typeface and size, together with more

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advanced options such as character spacing, hyphenation and automatic or manual kerning. One especially useful feature is that text within a frame can be automatically enlarged or shrunk to fit. Serif has also made PagePlus better equipped at dealing with long documents, with support for tables of contents and indices, so the program can now be used for the creation of books. For anyone unsure of their grammar there's a spellchecker, thesaurus and proof reader, while the layout checker can identify common problems such as empty frames and blank pages.

PagePlus has always been equipped with plenty of useful bolt-on extras and this continues in the new version with features allowing the easy creation of logos, calendars and spreadsheet grids. Throw in 17,000 pieces of clip art, 500 photos and 400 fonts and this gives even the absolute beginner the resources to produce anything from flyers and posters to newsletters and useful business stationery.

For the more demanding user PagePlus has always been the leading light in budget DTP, and this latest version is the same. Like its text-formatting options, the colour capability is also very advanced, and any screen object such as text, boxes and lines can be coloured. The colour support includes basic spot Pantone colours together with process colours specified using CMYK, RGB or HLS models.

Any self-respecting DTP program these days has to have the ability to create web documents and PagePlus does very well in this respect, thanks to a range of 17 web site design wizards. These create a multiple-page default web site complete with hypertext links. Adding new links to other pages or sites is easy and helped by the hyperlink manager. The site can be previewed using your browser and then each page saved as separate HTML pages. The best feature here is that you don't have to mess with HTML tags, so anyone can create their own site with maximum speed and minimum effort.

And so to the inevitable bottom line: is PagePlus the best budget DTP? At this stage it's hard to say. The new version of Microsoft Publisher is due out soon and the previous version was pretty good. But chances are that even when that hits the streets, it will be PagePlus that continues to lead the field because beginners find it easy to use and yet it still offers enough power for more experienced users.