High-end features
High-end features include precision layout, with one-tenth of a point, millimetre or degree sizing and placement, as well as both manual and automatic kerning. Colour is professionally handled, with Pantone solid and process colour libraries built-in. Page Plus will produce both spot and process colour separations, with automatic trapping if required.

New interface
This version sees some welcome streamlining of the interface. The button bars have been slimmed down to give more workspace, and the Change and Status bars which govern the formatting and placing of objects have been rationalised considerably. Settings such as font names, have wisely been moved to a standard WP-style formatting ribbon and the other controls have been combined into one small, tabbed, palette. This version is better suited to long documents, too, thanks to both indexing and table-of-contents creation. Both of these, as with many of PagePlus' features, are Wizard driven and thus don't constitute too much of a challenge, even for beginners.

Table editing
Serif veterans will be pleased to see that TablePlus, which mysteriously disappeared for a few versions, is back and looking better than ever. As its name suggests, this is an applet for producing tables, and it comes equipped with spreadsheet-style functions. As such, it considerably outclasses PageMaker for doing things such as summing, or averaging rows and columns. It has a built-in calculator for entering numeric formulas and "smart" features such as the autofilling of formulas or series across a range. It's good-looking as well as clever, with a range of fill and outline effects and the facility to angle text in cells. This latter is especially useful when lengthy titles have to be placed at the head of narrow columns.

Logo creation
Other accessories include LogoPlus, for layering text and shapes and producing special effects for logos or other artwork and the WritePlus story editor which comes equipped with both spelling and grammar checking. Further proofing is available from the new Layout Checker, which spots potential problems such as items being off the printable area of the page, or text in columns not lining up. There are two more new features, in the shape of Calendar and Mailmerge wizards. The former does exactly what its name suggests, with options of having space to write in the printed calendar. The latter, although somewhat unusual for DTP, was first seen in Microsoft Publisher. You could, for instance, have a printed-on label to mail newsletters, or simply personalise your Christmas cards.
HTML at heart

Web design
The main news is in web design. Serif has taken HTML to heart in a big way. First, there is a set of Page Wizards for creating a variety of ready-made web pages for personal, business and community use. There's a quick Hyperlink tool to attach URLs to text or graphics, or for more subtle surfing a Hotspot tool that can be used transparently anywhere on the page, so you can create Image maps consisting of several jumps attached to different parts of a larger graphic.
There are tools for creating scrolling text marquees, support for animated gifs (with 99 samples) and, rather cheekily, a copy of the Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard for getting the whole thing up and running, on site. Serif has always taken pains to give value for money and there is a lot here, including Wizards, Tutorials and a good graphic file browser. There's a plentiful supply of resources, too: 400 fonts, clipart, and lots of wizards and templates.