PagePlus 10
PagePlus 10
 By Dale Farris,
SecretaryGolden Triangle PC Club June 2005 General Overview The result of over a decade of sustained development and with dozens of powerful new and enhanced features, amazing PagePlus 10 is here! The host of improvements to this newest edition are all designed to make your desktop publishing work quicker, easier and more fun! Many new features have been specifically added as a result of feedback from long-standing customers. These incredible new enhancements make desktop publishing more intuitive, productive and fun. At the same time, PagePlus 10 takes graphically-rich publishing to new heights. It's never been easier to create stunning, high-impact documents. With PagePlus 10 and your PC there really is no limit to the creative possibilities! The PagePlus 10 Resource CD is packed with more features than ever before, including over 1000 professionally-designed wizards, 12 brand-new tutorials and much, much more besides. Along with the Program and Resource CD, you will also receive two bonus printed color charts (one gloss finish, one matt finish), allowing you to see exactly how your colors will look when they’re printed commercially. To celebrate the launch of PagePlus 10, for a limited time Serif is including a free 4-port USB Mini Hub with every order for PagePlus 10. As you've probably noticed, the number of peripheral devices using USB seems to be growing almost out of control these days. The 4-Port hub allows you to connect 4 devices to just 1 USB port. It can also be 'daisy-chained' with your existing ports and hubs to connect even more devices. Plus, also for a limited time only, your entire order - including the PagePlus 10 Program CD, Resource CD, Printed Companion and free 4-Port Hub will be delivered to you without any postage, packing, shipping, handling, delivery or other 'hidden' charges of any kind. What's New in V. 10? Amazing BookPlus Creating long documents is a breeze with PagePlus 10’s brand new BookPlus! So, whether you’re working on a magazine, newsletter or even your first novel, with BookPlus you can combine multiple PagePlus publications into a single coordinated document! You can even print or PDF your document with powerful options, including common page numbering. Synchronize Publications Want to coordinate Text Styles, Object Styles or Color Schemes across multiple publications? What used to be a hassle is now made so simple with this brand new feature! PagePlus 10 makes it a snap to synchronize attributes from different master publications! Full Unicode Support PagePlus 10’s text engine now supports Unicode characters – essential for international publications. If you want to publish your work in the Far East, or even to create documents that can be read in their native script by many of the UK’s diverse residents, you need PagePlus 10! Mail & Photo Merge Using the latest ADO and ODBC technologies, it really is a breeze to add photos, images or text stored in almost any database to your publication. Perfect for anything from photo albums to brochures, PagePlus will produce image- packed documents before your very eyes! All-new Find & Replace Humble ‘find & replace’ has been revolutionized by PagePlus 10. With this brand new feature you can now not only search for words and phrases but also text attributes, fonts, colors, alignments and words at certain positions in sentences and many more. This amazing new feature really can find just about anything Paste Format Plus New Paste Format Plus revolutionizes the conventional ‘copy & paste’. For the first time PagePlus 10’s Paste Format Plus will copy the attributes and settings of the object you’re working on rather than the image itself. If you want to easily recreate shadows, transparencies or filter effects on another object, then you need amazing new Paste Format Plus. Picture Toolbar Want to fix common photo problems without using a separate photo-editor? With PagePlus 10’s fantastic Picture Toolbar you can! This easy-to-use new feature gives you control of the brightness, contrast, color and resolution of your images – right within PagePlus! Layer Manager To keep your work better organized than ever, the PagePlus 10 Layer Manager lets you divide pages into separate layers. Master Pages can now also be assigned a layer rather than the whole page – giving you complete control over logos or regularly used text. Picture Frames It’s a snap to add pictures to any document with Picture Frames. If you want to see how your layout will look, but don’t yet have the final images available, use new Picture Frames. Then, when you do have the graphics you want, you can quickly add them to your layout. Color Picker The sensational Color Picker puts endless colors at your fingertips! The pipette-style Color Pickup tool can be used with any program on your PC and ‘pick up’ any color you request! What’s more it’ll also automatically add and store the colors on the Studio Bar, so they’re at hand whenever you need them! Footnotes and Endnotes Footnotes, and their counterpart at the end of a book, endnotes, are now available. They are configurable to use symbols or numbering, and can have automatic line separators to keep them distinct from the main body text. Insert Symbol Window A new dialog is now available for inserting special characters into PagePlus. Unicode compliant, the new Insert Symbol window can access all the characters in modern extended fonts. This is useful when the need arises for unusual symbols or regular characters from foreign alphabets. The window offers a recently-used symbols list and can insert characters straight into PagePlus with a simple double-click. Object Styles More Flexible and Attractive Page Plus's Object Styles now support Instant 3D effects and the optional inclusion or exclusion of specific Filter Effects (rather than one on/off switch for all Filter Effects). For instance, a user might like just the Drop Shadow from a complex marble Style—it’s now possible to apply just the Drop Shadow from such a Style and disregard 3D beveling and surface textures. PDF Enhancements Like the automatic Table of Contents feature in BookPlus, PDF bookmarks can now automatically be created based on text styles used in the document. In addition, PDF output now supports page-by-page downloading so that Web-published PDFs are readable very quickly, with pages being downloaded one-by-one as required. Paste in Place Following customer requests, PagePlus 10 can now paste objects in exactly the same page position as the original, even on different pages. New QuickButton An intelligent new QuickButton has now been added to the collection of QuickShapes. It looks great and can be used in the creation of any graphics, not just Web sites as its name might indicate. WritePlus Enhancements WritePlus now supports drag and drop text editing. Regions of selected text (and inline images) can be dragged to a new location. Control+drag copies selected text. Insert-mode (press the Insert key on your keyboard) is also now supported. WritePlus can now export text in modern Unicode formats. Table of Contents Now Supports Six Levels of Hierarchy At the request of our valued customers, the automated Table of Contents feature has been extended to support six levels of heading and sub-heading. Text Frame and Picture Outlines now More Flexible Lines and Borders have previously applied to all four sides of a frame or picture, but can now apply to any chosen sides. This makes it possible, for instance, to easily add an attractive line above and below the text frame, leaving the sides clean. Auto Placeholder Text Placeholder text can now be inserted as a design aid, with paragraphs of varying lengths repeated at random to fill the available area. PagePlus' placeholder text constructs realistic line endings to the paragraphs for better visual composition. Improved Text Autoflow Text overflow enables you to automatically create new frames, link them together, and insert your text when you are importing a text file. This behavior has been improved to look for spare frames, and to copy existing frame sets, and it has been extended to work for all instances where text overflows the available frame area. Web Publishing Enhancements Web Publishing enhancements include support for HTML 4.01 Transition (the later Web standard), and improved text layout to better match the way that Browsers display pages. Site publishing can now also be carried out in increments, so if you only change one object when editing your site, PagePlus can just upload the changed item rather than the whole site. Snapping Enhancements Object snapping now also happens about the object’s centre, not just its edges. This is useful when a guideline or margin is in the page middle. Snapped objects now also move with Guide Lines when they are dragged, keeping the layout crisp. Resource Management Improved Linked images can now have a relative path. This means that when you link an image in a publication, PagePlus will store the image path in relation to where the PagePlus publication is stored. You will see the benefit when PagePlus files are moved from one place to another. Automatic Updates The Automatic Update feature checks for new maintenance updates, ensuring that you're never out of touch with the latest PagePlus enhancements. This is linked directly to the Automatic Error Reporting feature, providing an easy to use submission utility which allows Serif Development to continuously improve software updates. Key Features Press-ready PDF files Now Page Plus's PDF output is 100% press-ready! Compliant with the new PDF/X1a standard, Page Plus's PDF output is now compatible with print presses the world over, there’s no barrier to perfect professional printing! With support for Spot colors and composite CMYK color, the single PDF file can now contain all the correct and accurate color information to ensure that your publications look just the way you want them to. More Efficient and Better Looking PDF files Font embedding has been improved, including support for embedding subset fonts—embed just those characters that have been used in the publication in order to reduce the PDF’s file size. There’s now also support for faux fonts—bold and italic styles in your document that have been “faked” because there is no specific font file for the style. Where a bold or italic (or bold italic) style is used and a font file does not exist, PagePlus can still reproduce the style in the PDF, as the font is converted to curves. PDF Security Security features are introduced with document protection and encryption. Now Page Plus's PDFs can be protected against copying, changing, printing, and being added to. Additional security allows for password protection against opening the PDF, and an additional management password control allows changes to the levels of protection after publication! Instant 3D Transform any text and any shapes into impressive 3D objects with their own texture, lighting, bevels, extrusion and perspective controls. And the original object (text, shape, QuickShape etc) remains editable. Object Styles Transform your text and other objects with a single click! From A to B or C in just one click? You bet! With a gallery of ready-made styles, it’s a breeze to renovate your creations with stunning 3D filter effects, fills, transparency, line styles, border and even typeface. You can create your own styles, edit existing ones, and even choose which of the customizable style elements are stored and applied to your objects! Objects update as you improve the styles, so your whole document can update in a single operation! New Range Of Filter Effects Add more depth and texture to objects and text you create in PagePlus with stunning new Filter Effects. Computer-generated patterns and surface textures mean realistic-looking wood, water, skin, marble and much more. New lighting controls, patterns and textures open up a whole new creative world—and your objects, along with the effects themselves, remain editable. And of course your favorite settings can be saved as Object Styles for future single-click-use! ICC Color Profiling Color profiling will mean more accurate colors for profiled monitors and printers—your printed and PDF output can now more closely match on-screen colors. Easier Curve Drawing with Smart Curves There are plenty of occasions when drawing a curve is handy in PagePlus—custom shapes as text containers, logos and artwork, areas of subtle color, special flashes and buttons—and drawing your own curved shapes has become far easier with the new Smart Curve type. Simply click on a few points and PagePlus will automatically produce curves between them, no need to practice with Beziers! Warping - Deform Using Envelopes Warp any of your objects in PagePlus—text, shapes, imported pictures—using customizable envelopes. Add perspective, slant, bulges and more. Choose to deform just outlines or include the object’s fill, and see an optional mesh grid showing the geometry of your warp. Table Tool Improved with Spreadsheet Functionality and More Tables have already been improved in recent PagePlus versions thanks to the Table Tool, and now we’re taking things a step further. Tables now support cell formatting, spreadsheet calculations, database import, improved copy and paste, and drag and drop! Phew! And it’s all made easier thanks to a new Table Toolbar. Convert Shapes to Text Frames or Crop Outlines This simple and flexible conversion process allows for even more creative freedom. Now any drawn shape can become a container for flowing text, or a crop outline (or clipping path) for uniquely-shaped pictures or other objects. Stamping your own personality and creative input on text and images has never been easier! Convert to Curves Converting to curves will make it possible to tweak text (or other shape) outlines, also called paths, making all objects, including the already-flexible QuickShapes, infinitely customizable. Text converted to curves and exported as a vector file can be an effective way to create a headline suitable for use on other computers that do not have the same font installed. Text Enhancements Text on a Path, Envelopes, and Custom Shaped Text Frames are just some of the ways that working with text has been improved. We’re also introducing improved text Find and Replace functionality, customizable Text Slant for “italics” in either direction to your desired magnitude, and the ability to change Text Case for those times that you accidentally misuse the cAPS lOCK key! Color Schemes Support CMYK Colors Custom color Schemes can now contain CMYK-value colors so that any documents containing schemes are suitable for professional printing either via separations or the creation of composite CMYK PDF files. Maintain Web Sites In addition to being able to upload your Web site straight to a FTP Server from within PagePlus, you can now also switch to Maintenance Mode to see your uploaded files, rename them, delete them, move them and more, enjoying familiar Explorer-style views and controls. Centralize Web Pages A new Web publishing option allows Web pages to be centralized in viewers’ Browsers, even though PagePlus promises pixel-accurate output! Set a Fixed Text Size in Web Pages PagePlus has always offered flexibility in Web design, and accurately reproduces your creations as Web pages, and now we can also offer fixed-size text so that when viewed in a Browser with non-standard font display settings, your Web site still looks exactly as you intended. Studio Page Manager A great new visual way to organize your multi-page publications, the new Studio Page Manager allows you to add, copy and delete pages or to assign a new underlying Master Page. You can even drag and drop the pages within your document to instantly change their sequence. Multipage View A massive usability improvement, Multipage View enables you to work with many pages in view at once, allowing you to type, draw and even drag and drop objects from one page to another, or from different sections of your document, in an instant. Multiple Master Pages Multiple Master Pages give you a choice of templates for all your longer documents allowing you to easily define different page styles for different sections of your projects. It's never been quicker or easier to create great looking standard and longer documents. Graphics Inline With Text A much requested enhancement, PagePlus 8 now allows you to set graphics to stay with their associated text. If the text changes position as more copy is added to the page, or flows from one page to the next, the graphics will automatically move with it. Faster Text Engine PagePlus new Secondary Font Caching technology means that text resizing and reflowing is quicker than ever, with instant font and size changes making all your work more productive. Drag and Drop With PagePlus it's simple to drag and drop elements from other applications - add images from Web browsers, text from your word processor and charts from spreadsheets, more quickly and easily than ever. Replicate Tool With the incredible new Replicate Tool, you can automatically create multiple copies of any object, spread out along a line or in a grid pattern. It's ideal for making perfectly aligned montages of your favorite pictures or objects. Table Tool The all new Table Tool allows you to design powerful tables directly within PagePlus, with no need for a separate utility. Plus, there's AutoSpell to correct common spelling errors, AutoFill for numbers and dates and stunning background fills to help you create your best looking tables, ever. Picture Borders Transform imported pictures with great looking borders. PagePlus new Picture Borders allow you to easily select a repeating pattern to use as an artistic frame for your favorite photo and you can even customize corners to get great results every time. Curved Wrap Outlines PagePlus allows you to easily create simple curves for wrap outlines with Bezier node editing for full control over your shapes. Flowing text around a curved shape is quicker, easier and smoother than ever! Freehand Shapes Draw any shape you can imagine with PagePlus amazing new easy to use freehand drawing tools. PagePlus will straighten your lines, smooth your curves and even automatically create closed objects for you allowing you to create stunning filled designs with no need for a separate drawing package. Stunning Fills PagePlus stunning range of fill types allows you to instantly create amazing, eye catching designs, with radial, conical, linear and new bitmap fills. Enhance your freehand shapes, QuickShapes and even Artistic Text with these great professional effects, now all your documents will really stand out. Bitmap Transparencies New bitmap transparency effects can be applied to any filled object, allowing you to further graphically enhance all your documents. Now you can create even more professional, high impact designs that will really make your graphic designer friends jealous! Artistic Text Now you can instantly create outstanding designer text, with stunning transparency effects, bitmap fills and graduated colors, perfect for high impact headlines and powerful design elements. Instantly resize, recolor, add fancy line styles and so much more the amazing design possibilities that Artistic Text opens up have to be seen to be believed! Rollover Graphics Support Design attractive Web sites with rollover graphics that change as a mouse cursor passes over them, with the option to specify up to four pictures to use as custom Rollovers when PagePlus creates your Web site and simple import of Rollover graphics from DrawPlus. Shadows, Glows & Bevels High-end graphical effects for all your objects! PagePlus can automatically create transparent drop shadows, inner shadows, inner glows, outer glows, plus bevel and emboss effects. These stunning effects, usually restricted to photo editing applications can now be applied to any object, right within PagePlus! Optimize Web Graphics Now you can apply your choice of image compression directly within PagePlus to ensure that your Web sites will download even more quickly than before. Plus, new global settings allow you to easily change the default format for Web graphics created by PagePlus. Target Customers PagePlus 10 provides the latest and greatest version of this super desktop publishing program that has for many years led this market. While PagePlus 10 is certainly no QuarkXPress, or PageMaker, it does provide a super package of powerful features at a very reasonable price. In addition, PagePlus is very easy to learn, providing a logical array of controls and a natural layout that will appeal to those new to desktop publishing. PagePlus 10 provides a super introduction to the desktop publishing market, offering a nice array of features at a nice price. Price $129.99 Includes the main program plus the Resource CD, Manual, Color Charts and FREE USB 4-Port Hub $169.99 Includes the main program plus the Resource CD, Manual, Color Charts and FREE USB 4-Port Hub PLUS the Serif Premium Image Collection DVD Contact the company for pricing for multiple licenses. System Configuration Requirements IBM-compatible Pentium PC Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, 2000, XP 64MB RAM 240MB free hard disk space CD-ROM drive Mouse (or other Microsoft-compatible pointing device) SVGA (800x600 resolution, 16-bit color) display or higher Additional disk resources and memory are required when editing large or complex documents. Optional Windows-compatible printer TWAIN-compatible scanner and/or digital camera Stylus or other input device Internet account and connection required for Web Publishing features and accessing online resources About Serif Serif is the leading independent developer and publisher of desktop publishing, design and graphics software for the PC. Privately owned and with operations in Europe and North America, Serif has an award-winning software range for desktop publishing, digital imaging, drawing and graphics, 3D effects and animations, and Web publishing. Founded in 1987 with the aim to develop low-cost alternatives to high-end publishing and graphics packages, Serif has consistently been praised for its powerful yet easy-to-use software which has put professional effects and demanding publishing tasks within the reach of ordinary PC users around the world. Providing best-selling titles and associated products direct to customers through its contact centers in the UK and US, and through traditional retail channels and the Web, Serif has over 230 employees at its head office, development and European sales centre in Nottingham, UK and its Internet development and North American sales operation in Hudson, New Hampshire. Contact Serif, Inc. 13 Columbia Drive, Suite 5 Amherst, New Hampshire 03031 603-889-8650 FAX 603-889-1127 www.serif.com |