BIOS: Technology Means Business

The latest version of Serif’s Web site development program has been designed to make relatively complex Web publishing functions accessible to all. Available for just £59.99, WebPlus 10 lets you create interactive, e-commerce enabled Webs ites with little HTML knowledge. Of course, the design process will be a whole heap quicker and smooth if you do know the basics of HTML. But if you are looking to make your first mark on Web, WebPlus 10 is an affordable solution for publishing work, photos and thoughts online.

If you own a business or otherwise don’t have time to learn Web design or money to hire a Web designer, then WebPlus 10 is a useful tool. You can set up a fully-functional Web site with e-commerce and RSS in just a couple hours (you’ll spend more time on the content than the design), and you won’t have to access any of the code it generates. However, it can create very bloated sites that download slowly.

WebPlus 10’s key new feature is its wizard-driven e-commerce facilities that make it useful for individuals, business users and organisations who lack in-house design expertise, but wish to promote and sell their products and services online. Nowhere near a complete ‘shop-in-a-box’ application, WebPlus does offer built-in support for three trusted payment services - PayPal, RomanCart and Mal’s - and the wizard guides you easily through adding the necessary components to create your online store. A choice of payment mechanisms, including pre-designed standalone buttons, forms and direct links to the shopping cart are available, and there are also facilities for providing one-off payments, subscriptions and donation options.

New Serif-hosted Smart Objects (interactive elements such as hit counters, shout boxes and blogs, only available once you’ve signed up for a free Serif account) enable you to add popular Web functions, including blogs, polls, RSS feeds, counters, mailing lists and more to your sites. Once you have selected your chosen Smart Objects, you simply drop them into the site design and WebPlus 10 does the rest. Forms can be quickly created using the Form Wizard to add controls and response fields - such as check boxes and combo boxes - and the data gathered can be forwarded by Serif or processed by your own script. The site templates aren’t too bad, but you’ll soon find yourself wishing for a more appealing look-and-feel.

Photographers will welcome the ability to create online image collections with the new PhotoGallery feature. The PhotoGallery window lets you select a group of images, add effects, frames, captions and links to the images, choose a layout and simply place the completed gallery in the chosen location on the Web page. HTML e-mails are also a snap to create. All you have to do it design an e-mail just as you would a normal Web page and then simply select the new ‘send page by e-mail’ option.

If you’re familiar with HTML editing or really want to get behind the scenes of your site, you can now view the HTML code which WebPlus automatically creates from your design, and even add extra HTML and JavaScript code to objects in the new Source Pane. With the Source Pane you can add dynamic effects, such changing the colour of an image when you hover the mouse over it, add JavaScript to perform event-driven tasks and insert Meta Tags to make your site more search-engine friendly. If you’re feeling really adventurous, you can even create entire pages from scratch! Sites can be checked before uploading in the same way that you’d pre-flight a DTP page.

Advanced users will also welcome WebPlus 10’s enhanced File Management capabilities, which allow better control over directory structure, file naming and provide improved export options for images, media files and more. Site navigation is now more flexible as the software still automatically creates Navigation Bars according to the site structure for speed and ease. However, you can now customise the navigation by selecting which menus appear and in what order, within each Navigation Bar.

WebPlus 10 makes it easy to link to or show content from other sites. You can create RSS feeds for other Web sites, and RSS feeds from other sites can be incorporated into WebPlus 10 pages. The RSS tool is good but not as convenient as dynamic Web sites that can create feed entries automatically when new content is created. Now you can include Frames in your site to display specific content from your site or other Web sites - ideal if you want to include adverts, to link to third party products, or to display images you have stored at a hosting site. You can also create Popups and specify size.

New HTML Text Frames and Tables ensure that only HTML supported characters are used so that text and tables will appear correctly in browsers. WebPlus 10’s new Font Management capabilities also assist inexperienced designers. When selecting fonts for your Web site you can look for the green tick alongside a chosen font, indicating that it’s ‘Web safe’. The enhanced Layout Checker can also flag up any unsafe fonts, enabling you to substitute or convert them into graphics. Single pages can now be updated incrementally, saving on time and monthly upload allowance, and WebPlus 10’s new FTP Upload functionality also makes it easier to maintain sites. A backup WebPlus file is also automatically created and saved on the server when a site is uploaded, providing added peace of mind.

Web banners, adverts and logos can all be directly created within WebPlus 10. Using the supplied QuickShapes you can create design elements, or add photos from your digital camera, scanner, flash drive or hard disk drive to use in your design. WebPlus 10 offers a good range of design tools ranging from one-click photo fixes, Filter Effects, Instant 3D and Transparency to Mesh Warping, Gradient, Linear and Bitmap Fills. You can even spice up your site with sounds, videos and Java applets. With built in Wizards for creating animated banners, support for animated GIFs, rollover buttons and custom HTML code, it’s a snap to create multimedia Web sites. SWF Flash files can even be inserted in WebPlus pages and there’s a new option to control playing/looping settings.

WebPlus 10 does what is says it does, and that is to make it possible for less experienced users to create interactive Web sites and enter the world of e-commerce. The software provides very competent design tools, allowing you can take one of its pre-designed sites and customise it, create a site from its many automated tools and functions or design one from scratch, in a mixture of DTP-style design and HTML coding. If you’re looking for an easy way to get a Web site up that looks nice and has professional features, you won’t go wrong using WebPlus 10.

[6.5]

[Best Design Software Pricing UK]
[Best Design Software Pricing US]