WebPlus 9
WebPlus 9
 By
Dale Farris, SecretaryGolden Triangle PC Club June 2005 General Overview So you've got a great idea for a Web site to promote your small business, club or organization. You've got the information and some photo images but you're put off by all the complex jargon that's associated with Web design and you don't have the time to spend days on end trying to make sense of all that baffling code. Make way for WebPlus 9! WebPlus 9 is simple and quick, yet extremely powerful. It breaks down the technical barriers and allows you to create your own live Web Site within just 2 hours! If you want to discover the easiest way to design and publish your own professional looking web site, then WebPlus is for you. WebPlus 9 breaks down the technical barriers, enabling anyone to create their own professional looking site. You'll be so impressed with the results you'll want to show the world - no problem - you can even sign up for 30 days free Web space to publish your site! As with all Serif software, this Web creation superstar is full of features that make it simple, easy-to-use, powerful and quick. With WebPlus' enhanced interface, incredible graphic presets, Web design functionality and publishing capabilities you can create your own outstanding site in just 2 hours. What's New in v. 9? Themed Web Styles New Themes allow the look of a document to be changed with a single click! They work like Color Schemes but include theme settings for navigation controls, buttons, graphical bullets and of course colors. Themes can be customized for a personalized touch. HTML Import for Existing Web Pages Import text and graphics from existing Web pages to kick off your WebPlus 9 creations. Supported import features include images with hyperlinks and pop-up text, background images, text with style and hyperlinks preserved, page title and metatags, sound and video objects. HTML from a browser or email program can also be imported using the Clipboard and WebPlus’s Paste Special command. Cool Navigation Bars and Menus You can now create vertical or horizontal Navigation Bars that automatically match your site’s structure! Using the site structure’s inherent Parent/Child relationships, these cool new buttons and menus can form the new basis of site navigation. A single navigation bar can be added to a Master Page used by your site and it will be correctly formed with appropriate menus on every page that uses it! Page Anchors and Other Hyperlink Improvements It’s now possible to create an “anchor” (also known as a bookmark) part of the way down a page and link to it. This feature is great for long pages. Jump to regular objects, imported images, or text. A new Anchor Manager keeps track of your object anchors. Images can also hyperlink to a full-size version of themselves, displayed on an empty page. You can now set links to open in a new Browser window, the same Browser window, or a new named Browser window. Text hyperlinks now also auto-insert useful text if none was selected. Tabbed Interface WebPlus 9 offers an easy way to have multiple documents on screen at the same time. Tabs are provided along the top of the screen for each open document or preview, making it really easy to flick between documents. Site Structure Controls WebPlus now supports the creation of Web sites with a defined structure. For example, a page about surfing can be stored inside a hobbies folder. This will make for more consistency when creating interesting site structures as the storage hierarchy can adopt the same structure as the site itself. Incremental Site Uploads A new FTP utility offers impressive incremental uploads of your site. If you modify your WebPlus file, perhaps changing just one image in your site, that image is the only file that will be uploaded to your Web space when you next publish, saving you valuable time. Amazing New Filter Effects An expanded range of impressive Filter Effects are available for any of your text, images, or drawn objects. You can add stunning bitmap and 3D computer-generated patterns, bitmap and computer-generated surface texture effects, 3D lighting, and the extremely useful Feather effect for soft-edge blends to your background. Object Styles Enjoy simple single-click presets for text and other objects with rich combinations of fills, shadows, glows, bevels, 3D surface textures, lighting, feathering, patterns, fonts, and outlines. Object Styles can be edited and created from scratch for easy reuse. Site and Resource Management The Text, Font, and Image Managers have all been improved for this edition of WebPlus, offering easier ways to rename text objects, add a snippet of text to help identify auto-named text objects, and a simple way to assess which text objects and fonts are in use on any given page, and whether or not to include Master Page objects in the resource lists. Live Preview A new tab is available offering a live preview of your site right in the WebPlus interface. The preview uses the world’s most popular Web browser, Internet Explorer, and has presets for page sizes so the site can be assessed as if by different Web surfers. Instant 3D Vitalize your drawn objects and text with stunning new Instant 3D technology! Extrude text and other objects and maintain their fills with impressive new 3D lighting, rotation, extrusion, texture wrapping and beveling. Mesh Warping WebPlus offers tremendous power and flexibility with its new Warp tool. Transform any object such as drawn shapes, text, or imported pictures by warping and deforming to your heart’s content. Preset Warp shapes make single-click transformations possible for easy text-in-a-circle, a wavy-shaped picture, perspective or fish-eye effects and more. Automatic Thumbnails with More Efficient Output When imported images are resized to take up less space on the page, WebPlus can automatically republish the image at lower resolution to speed up the Web page load time. Intelligent decision-making about rescaled images means that WebPlus will always offer a good balance of download time versus image quality. we’ve also introduced repeatable file name prediction for drawn content to spot instances where auto-generated images can be reused for efficiency. Last but not least, images can be imported at “screen resolution” for maximum efficiency. This is particularly useful as images from digital cameras can be many times larger than required for display on the Internet. Text on a Path Enjoy great-looking curved text directly on the WebPlus page! Text can be curved along any drawn line or can conform to easy-to-use preset curved text shapes. Improved Text Engine The WebPlus core text editor has been improved in a number of ways for this release. Overwrite mode (toggled with the Insert key) has been introduced to make text easier to replace for those people accustomed to this mode from other programs. We've also added drag-and-drop text editing. WritePlus and WebPlus both are now able to clear custom text formatting (reverting to current Style defaults) with a keystroke for speedy edits. WritePlus can accept Unicode text from the Windows Clipboard and can also export text in a variety of Unicode formats such as UTX, UTF8 and UTF7. Image Toolbar and Improved Image Properties Speedy adjustments to pictures can be made right in the main WebPlus 9 interface! Adjust brightness and contrast, and recolor the image. Access the Image Properties window to see the name, location, size, and other attributes of the selected image. Fit Hotspot to Shape Automatically fits Hotspots to match selected shapes. Perfect for graphics created with QuickShapes, this allows shapes to have custom Hotspots without having to edit the Hotspot shape. New QuickButton A new QuickShape for creating stylish Web buttons has been introduced. This not only makes it extremely quick to spice up documents with sexy buttons, but it’s also easy to be consistent across pages and sites. More Flexible Pages Individual page Properties (titling and metatag information) are improved. Pages can now also be of variable length and background based on multiple master pages, and can be centered or not on a page-by-page basis. Preview your Site in any Browser WebPlus automatically detects installed Web Browsers (like Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera) and offers a preview in each. The Preview in Browser button is expanded to a list of available previews and Browsers. Improved HTML Output The HTML output from WebPlus 9 will conform to the WWW Consortium (W3C) standard for HTML. The powerful WebPlus text-handling engine has been updated so that the screen view more closely matches browser output for sites that look better than ever. Shockwave/ Flash Support SWF Flash files can be inserted in WebPlus pages and there’s a new option to control playing/looping settings. Full Unicode Support WebPlus 9 fully supports Unicode, making it possible to design with foreign-language or exotic/symbol fonts and characters. Multilingual sites are now within reach! Support includes MS Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. WebPlus can convert characters to their Unicode keyboard shortcut and back again, and from the built-in text-editor, WritePlus, can accept Unicode text from the Clipboard and can export Unicode-compliant text files. Color Picker Tool While WebPlus has enjoyed PagePlus’s great controls for specifying and editing colors, there’s now a cool Color Picker tool that can grab a color from anywhere on screen (even outside the WebPlus program) with a zoom preview of the spot under the cursor. The Color Selector dialog now works with RGB and Hex values side by side for easier Web design. Inline Graphics New left and right-justified picture placement in text frames mean even more flexibility in mixing text and graphics. When used in conjunction with Tables, this feature offers the ability to make useful grid-like compositions which are great for product offerings such as catalogues. Inline graphics can now auto-resize when inserted, and can be cut and pasted around your site. Improved Table Tool The Table tool has been improved to incorporate new features such as spreadsheet formulae, AutoFill and more. Improved User Interface Thanks to the fresh attention WebPlus has received from its professional programming team, the User Interface has undergone changes to ensure maximum productivity. Enjoy consistent use of pixel-measurements (with a decimal place) throughout the program, new buttons, menus, tool flyouts and toolbars. Page Hints are also improved to include more hint types. Features DTP Style Page Layout WebPlus's easy-to-use DTP style interface makes it a snap for anyone to design truly outstanding Web pages. Whether you're an existing Serif user, or new to Serif products, you'll be up and running in minutes. You'll be amazed by just how easy WebPlus makes the supposedly complicated world of Web site design. Simple Web Publishing With WebPlus, publishing your new site to the World Wide Web couldn't be easier. With just a few clicks you can preview your design in your Web browser, check the layout & links & publish your masterpiece online. WebPlus will automatically export all the files that you need for your site, really taking the headache out of Web Publishing. Integrated Layout Checker WebPlus includes a powerful integrated Web page Layout Checker to give you the ultimate "helping hand" when creating your Web site. The Layout Checker will alert you to a variety of common layout problems, such as graphics which will take a long time to download, text which may not display properly and much more besides. Web Graphic Optimization WebPlus makes it incredibly simple to get the right balance between quality and file size for all your Web images. The built in Web Picture Wizard will guide you through all the options for your Web graphics to ensure that your site not only looks great, it downloads as quickly as possible. Sounds, Video & Java Spice up your site with groovy sounds, exciting videos & funky Java applets. WebPlus includes a raft of options to really make your site stand out from the crowd. With built in Wizards for creating animated banners, support for animated Gifs, rollover buttons & custom HTML code, it's a snap to create an outstanding multimedia Web site. Built in Site Maintenance WebPlus includes a fantastic new Web site maintenance feature - exclusive to this new version, that gives you full control over your site after it's published to the Web. With a full range of powerful options, allowing you to move, rename and delete your files while they are online, it's never been easier to maintain your site. Hyperlinks & Hotspots With an easy-to-use Wizard for adding hyperlinks to your pages, it's simple to create outstanding interactive sites. You can easily add hyperlinks to the text, graphics or any other objects on your page, plus there's even a powerful hotspot tool that allows you to draw areas on your page and automatically assign hyperlinks to them. No Programming Required Most other Web design programs require you to learn HTML, Javascript or other complicated programming languages in order to achieve the results you desire. WebPlus is different with its unique, DTP Style WYSIWYG interface it couldn't be easier to design Web sites that will make even professional designers jealous. Web Wizards for Instant Web Sites Just pick the type of publication you want to produce and answer a few simple questions. WebPlus does the rest! Revisit your color scheme and text selections at any time as you continue to work with a publication. You can customize the scheme colors, create brand new schemes, and apply any scheme to a "from-scratch" Web site. Basic user details are stored for automatic reuse. Easy Editing and Special Effects With WebPlus, it's a snap to import your own text and graphics to replace the Wizard samples. You'll find built-in modules like WritePlus, for integrated word processing, plus tools for creating text hyperlinks and hotspot graphics. Choose the color scheme that looks best. The Snapping feature and Dot Grid help you achieve a crisp layout. Everything's wrapped into a friendly DTP environment with onscreen Tooltips, HintLine, and context-sensitive help! Versatile Web Feature Support WebPlus supports HTML 4.0 for better WYSIWYG page design. Add animated GIFs, marquee effects, sound, and video—even Java and HTML code—to spice up your pages! The Layout Checker helps you fine-tune your site before it's published. Then preview your site in your own Web browser and publish it to a local folder or a remote server. Animated GIFs and Marquees Add life to your Web pages! Choose from over 600 animated Animals, Cartoons, Dingbats, Logos, Objects, and more. Use a Wizard to custom-design your own varied and colorful multi-line text messages that scroll across the screen. On-screen Studio Combines Convenience with Functionality The Studio's tabs provide rapid drag-and-drop access to commonly-used controls such as fonts, line settings, and the color table. Use the Portfolio to store your favorite designs for use in any Web site and tap the Gallery, with built-in mastheads, logos, and lots of other page elements you can customize to suit your needs! Professional Layout and Text Tools Intelligent text fitting. Movable rulers and guides. Precision placement, rotation, flipping, and cropping. Text formatting with named styles. Master page for repeating background elements. Not to mention word count, search and replace, spell-checking, thesaurus, and proof reader to ensure your site's readability. QuickShapes Long an exclusive feature of other Serif solutions, QuickShapes work like intelligent clipart or the most powerful set of drawing tools you can imagine. Just choose a template shape, drag on the page then adjust handles to customize each angle and dimension. Powerful Drawing Options An arsenal of new drawing tools are at your command. Sketch freehand lines and curves. Extend existing lines with ease. Apply line styles to all kinds of shapes—even add line endings like arrowheads and diamonds. Gradient Fills For sophisticated illustrations and impressive text effects, select from a wide variety of Linear, Radial, and Conical fills. Use the interactive fill tool for drag-and-drop updating of fill nodes and colors. Transparency Effects Both solid and variable transparency let you add new depth to your Web creations using both .GIF and .PNG formats. Apply transparency directly from the Studio, then edit nodes and opacity with the interactive tool. Integrated Table Editor and Calendar Wizard Use TablePlus to create colorful, sophisticated cell-based publication elements. Include formatted text and spreadsheet formulas; vary color and table style with a few mouse clicks! Choose from a wide variety of sizes and design options, then just click and drag to fit your calendar to a column or a whole page! Multiple Document Views Now you can use WritePlus, the built-in story text editor, side by side with the page editor. Instantaneous updating of each window allows simultaneous draft and layout views of Web page text! Fastest on the Draw For sheer speed, our new drawing engine reigns supreme! Not only that, automatic anti-aliasing of lines, text, and polygons results in superb visuals, both on-screen and on the printed page. Streamlined Text Handling Re-engineered from the ground up, the ultra-fast text engine means editing text is simpler and more like word processing than ever. You'll no longer need to switch to a separate Text tool or cope with artificial "text blocks." And more logical paragraph and character text styles will help you keep formats under control. Amazing Logo/Graphic Module Produce attention-grabbing headlines, unique text effects, and powerful logos instantly using our exclusive LogoPlus creation tool... Total Ease-of-Use Right-click menus.
Illustrated QuickTours to smooth the learning curve. Plus HintLine, Wizards,
and context-sensitive cursors to make WebPlus as friendly as a puppy! |