PagePlus 6 review

Other flyout tools include no less than 27 new graphic shapes including stars, triangles, arrows and callouts, though there's no freehand tool or editing capabilities. Rather more powerful are the 18 new text-frame shapes including ovals, hourglasses and heart shapes. These act just like rectangular frames, with the ability to control columns and margins and to set auto-fit, and should lead to a burst of creative new designs - as Serif puts it 'now you can break out of the boring box'. Also helping your designs to break out of the box is the new ability to set an imported bitmap's background to transparent so that your pictures can take on any shape, not just rectangles.

In terms of output, the main improvements have been made to PagePlus's Web capabilities. Since version 5, PagePlus has offered a Publisher-style dedicated Web mode, and this has been enhanced with the ability to add sound, video, Java applets and even to add HTML code directly. A rather more realistic enhancement is the bundling of 600 animated GIFs. The main new feature is HTML 4 support. In many ways this is ideal for PagePlus's DTP-style Web capabilities as CSS-based handling offers pixel-precise placement and accurate font control. The problem is that viewers with older browsers will just see a jumbled mess. For a business site the threat of losing potential customers isn't acceptable, but for the personal user this is far less important. Alternatively, you can always set PagePlus to revert to outputting HTML 3.2 nested tables though the HTML is considerably more complicated.

PagePlus still doesn't seem completely comfortable outputting Web sites, but feels much happier when outputting to paper with advanced features such as comprehensive support for commercial print including full process colour separation. This is by its nature a complicated area and version 6 attempts to help users through the jungle with a Professional Print Wizard, which walks you through the steps necessary to prepare your PostScript files ready for output. The Wizard is fine as far as it goes, but it's disappointing that there's no direct support for producing Acrobat PDF files. At least PagePlus has made one aspect of high-end print a lot simpler: imposition. For producing publications such as greetings cards and folded brochures, you can now leave PagePlus to take care of orientating and ordering the printed output to produce correctly assembled masters.

PagePlus' commercial print capability remains impressive, but it no longer provides the program with the killer punch that it needs against its old rival - at least not since Microsoft finally added separation capabilities to Publisher 2000. In fact, PagePlus no longer outscores Publisher in any department. Serif has done well to come back fighting but in all areas, from starting templates through to final Web output, it's still outscored by the market leader. Publisher is undoubtedly the stronger program and the bigger hitter, but that's not quite the end of the story. PagePlus has one shot left in its armoury: value. With Serif's typical discounting you can expect to pick up PagePlus at a bargain price. By dropping a division and targeting the personal consumer rather than the more demanding business market, PagePlus is still able to pack a considerable punch.

Author: Tom Arah