Product Reviews

WebPlus has always tried to make designing a Web page as simple as designing a leaflet. Where most Web design packages start you off with a vast white page and nowhere to begin, all you have to do with WebPlus is select items from the menu on the left of the main screen - a picture, for example, or some text - and place them on the page. If you're not happy with the way you've placed your elements, you can drag the items around with the mouse-pointer and rearrange them.

If you're not sure where to start, WebPlus includes plenty of templates as standard, with even more on the free resource CD that comes in the box. Building a site from one of these templates is easy: you simply select a design that you like, and add your own text and images until you're happy. The available templates range from colourful sites aimed at kids to professional-looking ones that would be ideal for a small business.

WebPlus also has some great features to help you create a well-organised Web site. One of the most important parts of any site is the navigation system which allows users to move from page to page. Many programs make it difficult to create a good navigation bar and to keep it up to date, but with WebPlus it's simple. Just select the type of navigation bar you want and where you want to place it; if you add or remove pages from your site every navigation bar will be automatically updated.

Another great new function is the Site Structure tool. This gives you an overview of all the pages in your Web site and how they are connected - if you want to move them around you can just drag one and drop it into

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Unfortunately, WebPlus isn't without its problems. Although it creates pages that look just the way you designed them, it doesn't make them as well as some programs. For example, if you create a table where cells have a coloured background WebPlus creates this coloured background as an image. Some programs will create this as a proper HTML table, which will load faster. WebPlus also habitually creates pages which don't obey the rules for Web page code set by the W3 consortium (www.w3.org) - this isn't usually a problem, but it does mean you can't be sure they will display perfectly in every browser and on every computer. A program such as Namo Webeditor will let you create pages which obey the rules which means they will work in every browser and work better for disabled viewers.

WebPlus also seems to go out of its way to help you create pages which break all the rules of good Web design. For example, WebPlus installs a number of non-standard fonts on your computer. Using these fonts on a Web site will usually result in either a page that uses images to display text, which will load slowly, or pages that will display text using the wrong fonts, because the people viewing your Web site don't have the same fonts you used in creation.

WebPlus is a clever program but it needs to be used with a little care to produce good pages. This is fine if you're a reasonably experienced amateur Web designer, but could be frustrating for beginners. If you want to make a personal homepage as easily as possible it does the job well; knocking a page together is no more difficult than making the same page in a word processor. But, you'll have to keep a look out for things like non-standard fonts and background images, as these will make your site less easy to use: better if they weren't there in the first place.

If you want to make a Web site for your company then NetObjects Fusion is a more precise and versatile product. It sticks to the rules of current HTML standards and has good business features, such as a module to design online shops. If you want to create well-written pages that meet disability guidelines, consider a package like Namo, FrontPage or Dreamweaver.