PagePlus 5 review

One of the major changes in PagePlus 5 is the re-introduction of TablePlus. This is a semi-detached module that allows cell-based tables to be created and pasted into a layout. The module offers a number of fairly advanced features such as the ability to include basic formulas and to automatically fill cells with standard sequences like days of the week. As such, TablePlus is ideal for the production of relatively simple projects like invoices. However, there are still limitations. Text is still not entered directly in the cell, and colour handling is very different from that in the main program. More importantly, the fact that tables are created as OLE objects leads to complications. There's no way to have a table flow across pages, for example.

Another new module in PagePlus 5 is the Design Portfolio. This is an optional panel running down the right-hand side of the screen which gives access to frequently used items. If you design a logo for your company in the text effect module LogoPlus, for example, you can then drag it onto the Portfolio window. To then include the logo in any other project, you can simply drag it back from the Portfolio onto the page. The Portfolio is certainly useful, but it's also something of a missed opportunity as the concept could easily have been widened to offer access to the 400 fonts and 17,500 items of clip-art that come with the program.

One of the most common uses of PagePlus will be for creating personalised projects such as greetings cards and certificates. The program now allows you to add mail-merge fields such as names and addresses so that you can automatically customise each design for different recipients, with the data stored in a standard address file holding up to 20 fields for each record. However, it isn't possible to see the data in the context of the layout, and with no conditional control it's impossible, for example, to automatically print out only those letters with addresses based in one city.

Killer Web features

So far all the new features in PagePlus 5 are welcome, but slightly uninspiring. The killer feature Serif is pinning its hopes on is its all-embracing conversion to the Web. PagePlus has actually boasted Net support before; since version 3, in fact. However, in practice this boiled down to the ability to create Acrobat files; a feature entirely dependent on the purchase of Acrobat Distiller and which could just as easily have been claimed by any Windows application.

Somehow the holding operation has paid off, and now Serif has finally made good on the promise. Selecting the Switch to Web Publishing command replaces the ail-merge menu with a new Web menu. This offers a number of dedicated features such as the ability to add hyperlinks to any selected object or text. When your navigational links are in place, selecting the Preview Web Site command automatically converts your design to HTML and opens it into your browser. It's as simple as that.

There are some snags. Yes, the publication will be converted, but the results might not be exactly what you expected. Any text in a coloured frame, for example, will be converted automatically into a GIF graphic. The same will happen if the text frame overlaps with another frame or an imported image. Your Web page will look great, but it won't be searchable and might take a minute or more to download, so no-one will revisit it.

PagePlus offers a number of tools to avoid such mistakes including the Layout Checker Wizard, which picks up on these problems and others such as the use of non-standard typefaces. More useful still is the automatic redlining which appears around overlapping objects indicating that they'll be turned into a graphic unless they're repositioned. To be sure of the best results, it's better to start from scratch with one of the dedicated Page Wizards.