Serif Slide Show Plus X7 serial key or number

Serif WebPlus

WebPlus X8

Released 17th Nov 2014 • Updated (16.0.4.32) 8th Dec 2015 • Discontinued 6th Jan 2017

Serif Legacy Products

Legacy products can now be registered with a Universal Registration Key of 881887

If you have a license you can download installers for WebPlus X6, X7 or X8

WebPlus X8 is no longer sold by Serif, and is hard to find on E-bay etc. If you do buy it, make sure it is a legal copy with a product key.

Important Announcements: Serif shut down Serif Web Resources on August 31st 2018, and Serif Web-hosting on July 31st 2019. WebPlus won’t stop working — just any objects that rely on Serif Web Resources. I transferred this site, Softerviews.org, to a new web-host. As long as there are some still using WebPlus you can continue to get support on CommunityPlus. I plan to continue using WebPlus X8 for many years yet as it suits my needs well and I have invested many months into my Buddhist websites: aimwell.org (273 pages) and the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names (3,968 pages).

If you need to reinstall WebPlus X8 or WebPlus X7, but don’t have the installer, these can be downloaded from the links on this forum thread. How to obtain your product key.

Due to the success of Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for the MAC, Serif decided to concentrate their efforts on the Affinity range of products. Serif stated long ago that there would be no version of WebPlus to create responsive web sites, so it comes as no surprise that there won’t now be a WebPlus X9. The wish-list is obsolete, so I have removed it from this page. The older versions of WebPlus are also obsolete so I have merged older content to one section on legacy features.

There will be no Affinity web designer, but Affinity Designer (vector graphics), Affinity Photo (photo-editing and stitching), and Affinity Publisher (desktop publishing) are available for Windows and MacOS.

Ask on the Affinity Forum for road-maps and feature sets.

This is a brief summary of the main new features in the final release of WebPlus:

Audio Player • CSS Magnifying Glass • Custom CSS • Embeddable Fonts • Exclude Page

Manage Online Resources • Pinterest Button • Save as Package • SFTP Upload • Slider Studio

SWR Improvements • Task Monitor • TWAIN/WIA Scanning • Watermarking

Deprecated Features • Conclusions • Legacy Features

Audio Player

An audio player with ten different skins (selected in Site Properties for the entire site) to play common audio files.

CSS Magnifying Glass

Quickly and easily add a magnifying glass to an image for users to zoom in.

Custom CSS

Add a multitude of CSS properties to objects by selecting from a menu.

Embeddable Fonts

Use any installed font that permits embedding to increase the design possibilities, without the need to do any coding with @FontFace or upload any fonts. WebPlus now does all the hard work for you. Just remember the basic principle of “Less is More.” Don’t overload your site with lots of large fonts, or spoil the design due to inconsistent use of typefaces.

I have used a custom font here just to show-case the feature, but I wouldn’t recommend mixing fonts in the same story without good reason, e.g. to show code in a different typeface. I increased the font size from 12 to 14 point to compensate for the smaller x-height of the Mandala font used for this text compared to that for Verdana.

My free OpenType fonts have lots of symbols, e.g. for Chess: ♔♛♖♝♘♟ etc. Using custom fonts in this way greatly extends the versatility of WebPlus for foreign languages or special purposes. For me, this feature alone makes it worth upgrading to WebPlus X8 as I develop my own fonts, and need to use lots of Latin Extended characters on my Buddhist sites. It has long been a problem to use correct spellings and still be sure that site visitors can read the texts without downloading and installing special fonts. Even if one needs to use Burmese, Sinhala, or Thai words, as long as one has a suitable font that supports those character sets, WebPlus will do all of the coding, and upload the fonts automatically.

Exclude Page

Exclude any page from publication if it is not yet ready to publish. Very useful in the design stage, or when reviewing products not yet ready for sale.

Manage Online Resources

Large video files, PDF files, or archives can be uploaded just once unless the linked resource is updated locally.

Pinterest Button

Make it easy for site visitors to bookmark items by adding a Pinterest Button

Save As Package

Save a site project file *.wpp as a package, embedding all linked content and fonts. When opening the package on another PC, you will be asked to choose a folder to which to extract the content. This makes it easy to keep the *.wpp project file as small as possible for quick backup to the server by linking all content, while preserving a copy with all of the content for moving the project to a laptop or someone else’s PC. This current site is just 587 Kbytes as a *.wpp project file, but 168 Mbytes when saved as a package with all of the PDF files, Videos, etc.

SFTP Upload

Secure and encrypted uploading of data and file management on secure servers.

Slider Studio

A dedicated studio for designing sliders.

SWR Improvements

The Serif Web Resources interface was redesigned and improved for easy management of Smart Objects like Forums and Blogs. Note: SWR will cease to function on August 31st 2018 and submission of forms will cease on 1st April 2018. Ask on CommunityPlus for alternative solutions.

Task Monitor

The Task Manager Tab replaces the Site-checker with smart reminders of tasks that need to be done to fix site problems. Users can add their own tasks to create a ToDo list.

TWAIN/WIA Scanning

Improvements to 64-bit scanning already implemented in PagePlus.

Watermarking

Add text or logos to images to watermark them. Users often ask how to protect their images on the Internet. It’s not easy, but adding a watermark with your web site’s URL or company logo makes them rather less useful to others, and may be helpful if you do decide to take legal action. This method is perhaps the most effective solution, but it takes too much work for general use.

I have added a text watermark to the image on the left. It’s easy to change the font, font style, text size, style, colours, drop shadow, position, offset, rotation, etc., or one can use another image as the watermark. Watermarks have no effect on the image that is embedded or linked to the *.wpp file, so they are easily removed. They are combined with the original image on uploading the page to create a new watermarked image.

Deprecated Features

• Hit-counters have been removed. Use Google Analytics. Hits since this update:
• Page Counters have been removed. This site currently has 28 pages.
• Creative Text Frames were removed earlier, now all creative text is output as graphics.
• Serif Web Resources

Conclusions

For me, the benefit of font embedding is the most valuable improvement. My Buddhist sites need Latin Extended Additional characters and I develop my own fonts, so being able to embed fonts easily without writing and testing @fontface code is a huge bonus. The Audio Player also solved problems with playing MP3 files without opening a new tab.

The usual caveats apply when transferring sites from older versions:–

1. Keep the old version installed to maintain old web sites
2. Work on a copy of your websites in the new version
3. Upload the updated site to a test folder before making it live.

Legacy Features

WebPlus X7 improved performance with a 64-bit version, and updated the output code with HTML5 support. Below is a brief summary of some legacy features also found in WebPlus X8.

HTML5 • Startup Assistant • Video Player • Workspace Enhancements • Restore Last Session

Site Preview • Site Structure View • User Interface • WebTree Combo Box • Mobile Redirect

Form Date Picker • Preview in Browser • Publish Site • Page Layout • Working With Text

Tables and Calendars • Inserting Images • Manipulating Images • Photo Galleries • Animations

Smart Objects • Site Search • RSS Feeds/Podcasts

HTML5

Sites published with WPX7 use the latest HTML5 standard, which offers the best compatibility playback with no browser plug-in or media playing software required. You don’t need to learn any code, WebPlus does that for you. Just design your site freely using the many tools provided and the code will be generated for you. Of course, if you do know HTML coding, you can insert code snippets into your site.

Startup Assistant

The feeds-based Startup Assistant helps new users get up and running quicker with video tutorials. The learning page now links directly to Community Plus, Serif’s official Help site.

The news feed keeps you informed about the latest updates and other Serif News such as Patches, and special offers.

The latest announcement is that Serif Web Resources will be closing down on August 31st 2018, after which any Smart Objects will no longer function. Switch to another source to provide forms, forums, etc.

Video Player

Insert videos using the Flowplayer to play MP4 video without users needing to install Flash player. The player uses your own video files, so your site visitors don’t need to see YouTube or Vimeo ads. The player can be customised in many ways to change its size and appearance on your site. However, there is a small banner on the player, which can only be removed by licensing the player.

Workspace Enhancements

Workspaces have been around as long as the Studio Tabs. In previous versions one could save and load customised workspaces to suit different projects. Toolbars and menus could be customised before too, but to backup changes entailed a two-step process of exporting a Windows registry key and copying a file from the %AppData% folder. In WPX7, the toolbars and menus are now saved with the workspace, so the user only needs to copy the relevant *.wtb file from the %AppData%\Workspace Profiles\ folder to an external drive to make a backup. A drop-list on the context toolbar makes it easy to switch workspaces.

Tip: Remember to save any changes made to the toolbars, menus, or studio tab layout to a workspace file before selecting another one.

Restore Last Session

This is a great time-saver. On starting WebPlus you can now have it load the site or sites you were last working on, display the page you were working on, and resume just where you left off, already zoomed in to fit the page width, or however you prefer to work. See Options, General, On Startup.

Site Preview

When you preview your site in any browser, there is no longer any choice between previewing the current page or the whole site. The current page is previewed automatically, and other pages are generated as and when they are needed if you browse from the current page. This is also a huge time-saver. Instead of having to return to WebPlus, and navigate the site to preview a different page, you just navigate in your browser. If the page is long and complex it make take a few seconds to be generated, but you never have to generate the entire site to preview all pages as in earlier versions.

Site Structure View

This view gives an overview of the entire site structure as a tree, and allows pruning and grafting of pages and their child pages to another branch of the tree.

Although it is more user-friendly than the Site Tab, it is far less useful for restructuring a web site than the outline view that the Site Tab provides. Unless your site is less than 10-20 pages it won’t fit the window at a size big enough to read the page titles. NetObjects Fusion does it much better.

The screen shot shows a crop from the Structure View of the current site, for which 14 out of 28 site pages will fit my 1920 x 1080 monitor at a size large enough to tell which page is which from the Titles or page previews.

User Interface

WebPlus has medium (18 pix) and large (24 pix) icons for those with large monitors or less than perfect eyesight. A new Colour Toolbar makes it easier to apply fill, line, and text colours, and a Studio Toolbar gives quick access to your favourite studio tabs.

The menus have been totally rearranged to give those upgrading something new to learn, and to puzzle new users too no doubt. What flipping objects has to do with formatting is anyone’s guess, and all of the Tools (Spell-check, Thesaurus, and Proof-reader) have been moved to the Text menu. Its not all bad, of course, there are some logical changes, but I recommend spending a few hours customising the menus so that they make sense to you before you start using WebPlus in earnest.

WebTree Combo Box

The site navigation combo box in the status line has been improved to make it much easier to navigate large sites. On opening the combo box, the site structure is shown collapsed or expanded in the state it was when last used, making it easy to move around one branch of a large site without scrolling down a long list of pages to find the right one.

Mobile Phone Redirect

Detect if site visitors are using a mobile device and redirect them to another page. WebPlus can produce high quality sites for mobile devices using redirects, but it does not create responsive sites. See the tutorial on Creating Mobile Sites and Pages

Form Date Picker

A new form control for site visitors to select dates from a calendar.

There are many similarities between PagePlus and WebPlus, so for details of page layout and graphic editing features please refer to the PagePlus review page:

WebPlus lacks some of the finer typographical controls that are not relevant to HTML publishing. For example, OpenType support would not make much sense without @FontFace and Web Font support.

Preview in Browser

From the file menu, select Preview Site. Edit the Browser Preview List to rearrange the priority of any browsers installed on your system. By default, the shortcut Alt P will preview the site in the current window using Internet Explorer. Shortcuts Alt 1, Alt 2, etc., will preview the current page in the browser of your choice. These options will all view a locally saved copy of the current site. From the same Preview Site menu you can also select the option to view the site online in your default browser.

Publish Site

• Publish to Disk Folder — I provide an archive on the home page of my main web site for visitors to download so that they can browse my large site offline. I publish the site to a local folder and create a compact self-extracting archive using 7-Zip.
• Publish to Web — By default, this will publish just the current page. Enable the “Publish All Pages” checkbox to publish the entire site, or select individual pages. Clicking on OK will prepare the selected pages for publication, and the next dialogue will show a list of files that will be added, replaced, or left unchanged. It will also tell you the size of an incremental upload or full upload. Choose the former to upload only the changed or new files. To backup the *.wpp document to the web server there is a checkbox on the first dialogue. Be aware that this may take a long time, and will not backup any files that are not embedded in the site. Remember to clear the checkbox next time if you just want to test some minor changes.
• Quick Publish to Web — Publish changes to the current page and preview the results in your default browser.
• Maintain Web Site — Manage the site’s files on the server: download, delete, etc.
• Export as Picture — Export the selected object(s) or page to an image format. May be useful for site preview thumbnails, promotional material, customer correspondence, etc.
• Export as PDF — Export the site to a PDF file. There are no options to select individual pages, the entire site is published to a single PDF file complete with backgrounds, images, and non-functional navigation bars. Useful only for students to show their work to their tutors.

Page Layout

WebPlus is a WYSIWYG program, which makes it very easy for beginners to use. There is no need to know anything about HTML code, though if you do you can add some extras. Since I learnt web publishing on NetObjects Fusion, and do all of my paper and PDF publishing using PagePlus, it is very for me to create web pages in WebPlus. Layout tools make it easy to arrange text frames, artistic text, images, tables, calendars, and other objects on the page.

• Master Pages — Place navigation bars or other elements that repeat on each page or on many pages on the master page. Set a background colour or image background for the whole site in the master page properties.
• Paste in Place — To copy an object on one page to the same position on another page, use paste in place.
• Rulers — The rulers are enabled by default, but I don’t find them very useful so I disable them to save space
• Dot grid — Some users like to use a grid to lay out pages. It can be customised in Tools, Layout, Snapping, Dot Grid.
• Layout Guides — Red by default, these can be used to align objects. The colour can be changed in Tools, Options, Layout, Layout, Guide colour. By default guides are “sticky,” that is objects that are snapped to guides will move if the guides are moved unless the Alt key is held down while dragging the guide. Horizontal guides can be dragged down from the horizontal ruler, and vertical guides dragged across from the vertical ruler. To reverse that action, hold down the Alt key and click/drag to place a guide at that point on the ruler. Right-click on the rulers to lock guides or to hide the rulers.
• Dynamic Guides — If dynamic guides are enabled in Options, or from the Snapping flyout at the bottom right of the hintline at the bottom of the WebPlus window, objects can be aligned to their edges or centres by dragging them with the mouse.
• Snapping — Snapping of objects to each other, to layout guides, grid dots, or rulers marks, can be toggled from the snapping flyout at the bottom right of the hintline, or in Options. The default snapping distance can be changed in options too.
• Align tab — On the right of the WebPlus window is a left pointing arrow that will open a Studio if clicked or hovered over with the mouse cursor. The align tab can be used to align selected objects, or to space them evenly.
• Transform tab — The transform tab can be used to resize and position objects with pixel precision. Select the anchor point to determine which corner or vertex to measure from.

Working With Text

Text can be edited directly on the page, or in WritePlus — a powerful text editor built in to WebPlus. WritePlus opens in its own window, and task switching can be used to view the layout on one while editing a text frame on another page. WebPlus has several powerful tools for working with text, whether it is in HTML text frames, Creative text frames, Artistic text, or text in Tables and Calendars.

• Autocorrect — WebPlus comes with an extensive list of automatic typo corrections and you can add your own in Tools, Options, Text, Replacements, and add exceptions to the Abbreviations so that words after i.e., e.g., etc., are not capitalised automatically. Automatic replacements can also included formatting. Select some formatted text, and open the options menu to add it to the list of replacements.
• Spell-check — Spell-checking is available for several languages, and the dictionary used is context-sensitive depending on the language of the current text. If no language is selected from the Text menu, Character, Language, then no errors will be underlined in red. Spell-check as you type can be disabled in Options, Text, Proof-reading, and custom dictionaries can also be created here for custom user word lists. Use different dictionaries for different projects. See this thread on Sharing Dictionaries between different Serif products and versions.
• Proof-reader — The proof-reader will check grammar and spelling.
• Thesaurus — See a list of synonyms and antonyms.
• Import — Text can be imported from popular word-processing formats such as Word, OpenOffice, WordPerfect, or AmiPro, or using the universal Rich Text Format used by WordPad etc.
• WritePlus — This built-in rich text editor offers a clean screen window without the site background, and an independent zoom setting for easy proof-reading of text. Fields such as anchors can be shown or hidden, and an optional styles pane shows the current paragraph style.
• Export — From WritePlus the current story can be exported for backup purposes, or for sharing with other applications or other web sites. WritePlus has its own format for use in WebPlus or PagePlus, or Rich Text format can be read by many other applications.
• Paragraph Styles — Use paragraph styles and character styles to maintain a consistent look throughout your site. Typeface, font size, font colour, line-spacing, justification, or language, can be modified globally by editing the paragraph style. Change the formatting at the cursor position, and update the text style from the Text menu to change it everywhere.
  I use this so often that I have added a custom button to my customised toolbar to do it with one click. The Text Styles Palette, which by default is in the studio on the left of the WebPlus window with the HowTo tab, is also a useful way to manage paragraph and character styles. Open the drop down list by each style to manage the style. Use the Text Styles Tab to select all instances of one style, and apply a different one. Reapply the style to remove any local formatting, and make all paragraphs the same again. Base one style on another to create a hierarchy so that editing the parent style will affect all of its children.
• Change Case — From the Text menu, Change case submenu, change the case of the selected text to: Sentence case, lowercase, UPPERCASE, Title Case, or toggle the current case.
• Toggle Character Code – Use this command (shortcut Alt X) after a character to get its hexadecimal Unicode character code, e.g. € = U+20AC
• Sort Word List — Sort text lines, paragraphs, or table rows alphabetically.
• Autofit — Intelligently resize text to fit the current text frame.
• Frame Setup – Set the frame margins for HTML text frames, or set the number of columns, gutter width, and margins for Creative text frames.
• Overflowing Text — If there is too much text for the current text frame, choose to hide it, or show a scroll bar automatically or always.
• Vertical Alignment — Align text vertically in a text frame or quick shape.
• Ensure HTML Compatibility — Toggle between HTML and Creative Text Frames.

Tables and Calendars

WebPlus includes the table and calendar features from PagePlus, making it easy to create tabular layouts of club fixtures, competition results, product price lists, and so forth. Automated calendars offer many different layouts, and the calendar format editor extends the default styles to produce all kinds of designs. Tables can be HTML tables, or Creative Tables, but they are not dynamically updated.

Inserting Images

A wide range of popular image formats can be imported: BMP, FPX (Kodak Flash Pix), GIF, Animated GIF, ICO, JPG, J2K (JPEG 2000), IMG (Digital Research), PCD (Kodak Photo), PCT (Macintosh PICT), PCX, PNG, Animated APNG (Always use original file for export), PSD (PhotoShop), PSP (PaintShop Pro), RAS, SPP (PhotoPlus), SVG and SVGZ (Exported to bitmap formats), TIF, TGA, WDP (Microsoft HD Photo), EMF, SMF (Serif Metafile), and WMF.

Images can be left floating in the page, placed inline allowing text to wrap around them, or placed to behave as characters that flow with the text. Image export options determine how they are output. Run the Image Export Manager from the Tools menu to set the options for each image.

WebPlus comes with a selection of clip-art and stock photos. Open the Gallery tab on the right to select clip-art, open the Media Bar at the bottom of the window to browse the collection of photos. Add your own photos to new albums in the media bar, and organise them for each project. Drag and drop images onto the page, or into picture frames. Search albums using image tags.

Images can also be scanned directly into WebPlus or inserted from a Photo CD.

Manipulating Images

Images can be adjusted using the context toolbar, recoloured using the swatches tab, special effects can be applied, and tools can be used to crop, resize, or rotate them. Artistic effects or Pro Edits can be applied using PhotoLab (or edited in PhotoPlus if you prefer), and unwanted parts of photos can be removed using the Image Cutout Studio.

Metafiles can be converted to curves and ungrouped to break them apart. To recolour them, right-click and select the “Colour mapper.” Quick Shapes and lines can be used to create new images or add to existing clip-art. Selected objects can be converted to bitmaps, or exported in popular image formats at the desired resolution.

To insert a photograph inside a shape, place the shape over the photo, select them both, and from the Tools menu, select “Crop to shape.”

To replace an image with another, double-click it, or click the “Replace picture” folder icon at the bottom of a selected image. This will not change the shape or size of the placed picture, so unless the image is replaced with one of the same dimensions ratio it will be distorted. In PagePlus, there is an option to convert a picture to a picture frame, but this option is missing from WebPlus. To work around this, select the square crop tool, and just click on one of the resize handles without dragging it. The picture will become a picture frame, and the picture can then be replaced without being distorted by setting the frame properties to “No scale.”

Photo Galleries

Flash or Javascript photo galleries are a convenient way to display a large number of images in a small space on the web page. Professional Flash galleries load the images intelligently to reduce band­width usage.

Animations and Media

Another way to show multiple images in one place is to use animated GIF images with a slow frame rate. Animated PNG images (APNG) are supported by Firefox and Opera, but remember to set the export options to “Always use original image file and (never resample).” A rollover or animated marquee is another method (insert web objects).

Insert Shockwave Flash, Video, YouTube Video, or a Google Map. Unless there is a very good reason, avoid embedding sound in web pages. It is more likely to drive users away from your site than make them stay. Embed a media player or clickable link to start playing the audio file.

Smart Objects

This are interactive objects like Forums that make use of Serif Web Resources. The content of the Smart Object on the web page updates dynamically as the content is modified by users. Note: SWR will cease to function on August 31st 2018.

Site Search

Insert a results field first, then a site search to allow site visitors to search your site.

RSS Feeds/Podcasts

RSS feeds are indicated by a symbol by clicking on which the user can subscribe to that feed and keep up-to-date with any developments. Podcasts are syndication feeds just like RSS feeds, but offer slightly different options that reflect a podcast's use of digital media such as audio and video files. Put simply, RSS feeds will publish articles, while podcasts will broadcast information as episodes.

Page last updated on 06 August 2020

PPX9 • A Second Patch • New Features • Legacy Features • Tutorials • Support • Bugs

For reviews of earlier versions see the WayBack Machine Web Archive

PagePlus X9

Released 16th November 2015 • One More Patch

Serif Legacy Products

With the Release of Affinity Designer for Windows, Serif announced that PagePlus X9, PhotoPlus X8, and DrawPlus X8 are legacy products. As of October 2019, they are no longer sold. If you do buy it on E-bay etc., make sure that it is a legal copy with a product key.

Download PagePlus X7, X8, or X9 (You will need your 25-digit  Product Key)

Legacy products can now be registered with a Universal Registration Key of 881887

Due to the success of Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for the MAC, Serif have decided to concentrate their efforts on the Affinity range of products. They were designed to be cross-platform, so porting them to Windows has always been in the pipeline. It will be a while yet before Affinity Publisher is as capable as PagePlus X9. Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for Windows have been available for some time.

For a few years yet PagePlus X9 will still be the best Serif DTP product for Windows users. The wish-list for future versions is defunct so I have removed it from this already too long page. Older versions are no longer sold by Serif so I have merged my reviews of them into the section on Legacy Features.

I was rather surprised to learn about the demise of Serif’s flagship product, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s getting harder to patch up the old ship and keep it competitive with modern alternatives. Although its feature set has kept improving with each new version, performance has suffered. Starting over with a new product is a sensible move from Serif’s point of view, although many users may be unhappy if they have no easy way of transferring their PagePlus work of many years. I am hoping that I will be able to rebuild my publications by importing WritePlus files, but I may well find myself in limbo for five years before Affinity Publisher gets all of the features that I need. I currently face the same issue with my old browser. I am still using the discontinued Opera 12.18 for my email while waiting for Vivaldi to include its planned built-in email client. Vivaldi browser is now my default and does most of what I need.

The demise of WebPlus is not an issue for me at all. I can happily maintain my web sites using WebPlus X8 until my own demise. I only use the most basic features.

A Second Patch for PagePlus X9

The second patch was released to fix regressions in PPX9. All critical issues have been fixed, and most major issues too.

Publications saved from PPX9 will still not open in the Starter Edition or older versions of PagePlus without first saving them in PPX8 or PPX7. I assume that fixing this would have been too risky. I think that not many users will be affected by this.

Editing of Indexes is still much slower than in PagePlus X7. Unfortunately, I did not report this regression against PagePlus X8, so it has not been fixed. If you have a large index to edit, open the PPX9 file in PPX7 and do it there, before publishing from PagePlus X9.

Now that most bugs have been fixed, I don’t hesitate to recommend PagePlus X9 — even more so since it is now only £20. It has many significant improvements on earlier versions, and there are workarounds for most remaining bugs. In spite of it being the last version, it will be some years yet before Affinity Publisher for Windows is as powerful as PagePlus.

One major issue that has bugged me since the days of PPX5 has apparently been fixed. It is no longer impractical to work at high zoom magnifications due to serious redraw delays. Typically, I will zoom in to 800% or more to check fine details or the alignment of text and graphics, then scroll with the mousewheel, holding the shift key to pan.

New Features in PagePlus X9

Auto-frame • Calendar Events • Convert Text to Table • Enhanced PDF Support • EPS Export

GPOS Kerning • Guide Tool • Hunspell Support • Master Page Improvements • Placeable DPP files

QR Codes • Text Spacing Improvements • Tool Feedback • Tracking and Kerning • WebP Support

Recommendations

Auto-frame Synchronises Text Frames

Users accustomed to word-processors will find it easier to work in this mode. It will create a new page and automatically switch to this page for seamless word processing. One can specify the extent to which it does this, and in which way pages are created for the overflowing text.

Calendar Events Manager

Calendar events are now managed globally. Applying events will add them to all calendars in the current publication. Import and Export of iCalendar formats are also supported.

Convert Text to a Table

Tabulated data delimited by commas, tabs, paragraphs or custom characters, can be converted to a Table, which is attached to the text, but can also be detached using the Anchor Properties dialogue.

Enhanced PDF Support

• PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5 formats are now supported.
• There are more options for the initial view of the PDF when it is opened in a PDF reader
  Page Layout: Single Page/Column, Dual Page/Column (Odd left/right), User Interface: Hide Toolbar, Window Controls, Open Mode: Default, None, Bookmarks, Thumbnails, Fullscreen.
• Two new scale factors on the Publish to PDF dialogue are designed for exporting ISO size documents to the next smaller or larger size, e.g. A4 > A5 or A4 > A3.
• Overprinting on a per-object basis for line, fill, and text content.
• Overprint simulation is also provided to quickly check your work in PagePlus before exporting.
• PDF files now have an optional “Pass Through” mode. This ensures that any placed PDF files are rendered accurately when exported to PDF even though they may look incorrect within PagePlus.

EPS Export

Export to Encapsulated Postscript is now supported. There are options to control colour space, to deal with transparency, to output text as curves or to embed fonts.

GPOS Kerning

Glyph Positioning (GPOS) tables for kerning are usual in Professional fonts, which often don’t include the legacy kern tables. Other OpenType features like Titling Capitals (cpsp) that rely on horizontal Glyph positioning are also supported, but features that rely on vertical positioning like mark positioning (mark) are not. My free OpenType fonts have both GPOS and legacy kern tables, but the GPOS kerning is far more comprehensive with pairs for Small Capitals, Petite Capitals, and Ligatures.

Guide Tool

The new guide tool makes it easier to copy guides to other pages or layers, to move pairs of parallel guides together, to position guides accurately using the Transform Tab, or to nudge guides with the cursor keys. The Align Tab can be used to space guides evenly down or across.

Hunspell Support

Spell-checking and hyphenation dictionaries for languages from Afrikaans to Zulu that are supported by LibreOffice can be installed for use with PagePlus. The language used for spell-checking is a character level attribute that is set in the Format, Character, Language dialogue. The dictionary to be used for checking that language is set in Options. For example, you could use the WinterTree dictionary for checking English, but the Hunspell dictionaries for checking and hyphenating text in Polish.

Available Hunspell dictionaries can be found on the LibreOffice/Dictionaries repository.

Example: To install a dictionary for Hungarian:–

1. Scroll down to the hu_HU language link and open it.

2. Open the links for hu_HU.aff, hu_HU.dic, and hyph_hu_HU.dic.

3. Right-click on the (plain) text link at the top of each page to save the linked content to any convenient folder your hard drive, e.g. C:\TEMP\LibreOffice Dictionaries\.

4. In Windows Explorer, rename them from *.txt to *.dic or *.aff file extensions as appropriate.

5. In the PagePlus X9 Options dialogue, Text, Proofreading, click on theInstall Hunspell Dictionary …button and browse to where you saved the dictionary files. Select the main dictionary (in the above example it will be the hu_HU.dic file) to install it. A dialogue will then be shown where you can choose the languages that will use the new dictionary. If the hyphenation dictionary is available for your chosen language you will see a message saying that spelling and hyphenation dictionaries have been successfully installed. If no hyphenation dictionary is available, the message will say that a spelling dictionary was successfully installed.

6. Having successfully installed the Hunspell dictionary and hyphenation module (if available) for your language, you still have to tell PagePlus to use it for checking that language instead of using the default Wintertree spell-checker. Go to Tools, Options, Text, Proof-reading, and open the Language drop list. Select your language from the list. In this screen shot, I have selected Spanish (Spain: Traditional sort). Then set the dictionaries for Proof-reading and Hyphenation to Hunspell. Before, closing the Options dialogue, enable the checkbox to “Apply publication settings to new publications.”

Now any text in your publications that has the language attribute set to Spanish will use Hunspell. This is a global setting for new publications. Old documents will use the default Wintertree spell-check and hyphenation dictionaries unless you update this setting on opening them.

Simpler Method: Extract my Zip archives to a suitable folder and install them as from step 5 above:

Bosnian • Brazilian • Bulgarian • Croatian • Czech • Danish • English Australian • English British • Estionian • French • Galician • Greek • Hungarian • Icelandic • Latvian • Lithuanian • Netherlands • Norwegian • Polish • Portuguese • Romanian • Russian • Slovakian • Slovenian • Spanish • Swedish • Ukranian • Vietnamese

The archives contain the available *.dic and *.aff files for each language. All dictionaries are redistributed under the terms of the GNU License Agreement. Post on CommunityPlus if you need help getting the dictionaries for other languages or if you find an error in my archives.

Master Page Improvements

Master pages can be renamed and assigned to multiple selected pages at once using the Pages Tab. Right-click a thumbnail to open the Add Master Page dialogue.

Any master pages that are assigned already will not be included in the list. More than one master page can be assigned to the same page. By selecting a range of page thumbnails in the pages tab, master pages can be assigned or removed for all selected pages at once.

If the “Page Identifiers” are shown in the pages tab then the Master pages assigned to any page are displayed as single letters A-Z etc.

Placeable DPP files

DrawPlus X8 files can now be placed as images within your PagePlus document. From PagePlus you can then convert them to objects allowing for further modification. Earlier DrawPlus files are not supported, and multi-page DrawPlus X8 drawings should be saved with previews to allow all pages to be imported.

QR Codes

Originally designed to track components for vehicle manufacture, QR (Quick Response) codes are becoming increasingly popular in advertising, enabling smart phone users to quickly access product information such as a retailer’s website by reading the QR Code, which can contain significantly more data than a barcode.

Text Spacing Improvements

New options on the Paragraph formatting dialogue allow space above and below paragraphs to be ignored for adjacent text styles, added instead of using the highest value, and to honour the space before a paragraph at the start of a text frame.

Tool Feedback

As in DrawPlus, objects can now show live feedback when being resized. The setting can be disabled in Tools, Layout, Display if you don’t find it helpful. The object’s dimension show only when placing, resizing, or cropping objects, including Text Frames, Artistic Text, Tables, and Pictures. Feedback for lines is shown only after placing them.

Tracking and Kerning

The default shortcut of Alt + Left/Right has changed to adjust tracking/kerning in larger steps of 1% or in fine steps of 0.1% by using Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right. In previous versions the step was 0.1%, which was good for body text, but too fine for larger sizes.

WebP Support

The WebP image format developed by Google offers improved compression over the JPG format for photographic images. Although it is not supported by Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, or Safari browsers its potential for reducing bandwidth makes it an attractive proposition for Web masters.

On my web sites I provide a magnifying glass icon that users can click to view a high resolution WebP version. They can be viewed and edited in IrfanView if your browser does not support them. Opera and Vivaldi are ideal for viewing very large WebP images using fast scroll with the middle mouse button.

Recommendations

• If installing from a DVD, there are options not to install the extra fonts, samples, templates, etc., but these are not available with an electronic download. To work around this issue the installer can be extracted to a folder using 7-Zip, then setup.exe can be run from that folder.
• Edit the style sheets to check that everything is as you want it before you get to the final stages of your publication. Optionally, remove the 10 point spacing after each paragraph, and use a first line indent instead. Then Tools, Save Defaults, and make sure that “Text Styles” is checked.
• Create a new keyboard profile in Tools, Options, User Interface, Shortcuts. Modify or add shortcuts for each context, and save the keyboard profile. This shortcut data is in:
  %AppData%\Serif\PagePlus\19.0\Accelerators\ which should be copied to a safe place to make a backup. To save time, download my Customised Keyboard Profile and copy it to the Accelerators folder, then select it in Options. The shortcuts are shown on the menus. Download my Cheat Sheet and edit it to keep track of any changes.
• Customise the Toolbars and menus. If you have a 5:4 or 4:3 aspect ratio monitor, try moving the toolbars from the left side to the top of the window. This gives quicker access to the Studios and reduces mouse movement. Remove submenus wherever possible. For example, remove the Publications submenu from the View, Toolbars menu, and add items to the View menu to show or hide the publication tabs. If the publication tabs are on auto, the Toolbars submenu is not needed as right-click on any toolbar will show it. Assign shortcuts to show/hide the rulers and hintline. Buttons can be added to the menu bar. I have add the zoom drop list and zoom in/out buttons.
• Customise the Studios to suit your preferences. Save your workspace profile for future use or for sharing with others. To see what can be done, install my Compact workspace profile to:
  %AppData%\Serif\PagePlus\19.0\Workspace Profiles\. Be mindful that the toolbars and menus have been heavily customised in this profile, but its easy to switch back to the default profile.
• There is space for a floating Studio tab on top of the menu bar. With large (24 pixel) icons on a 1920 x 1080 monitor there is enough space for all of the icons that I need on one toolbar, with the context toolbar below. I have created a new toolbar called “Standard Plus,” and added an icon for “Update Text Style,” which I use frequently.

• Uninstall all of the fonts that you don’t use. PagePlus comes with a host of fonts, some of which are used by the design templates, but if you don’t use them, they just slow down font selection. The fonts installed with Serif applications (with the suffix SF) are of dubious quality, though the Bitstream fonts (with suffix BT or BTN) are better. Install my free OpenType fonts, which have a wide range of glyphs, or buy some Professional fonts with OpenType features. Get a font manager like MainType if you have a large font collection, or get the free AMP font viewer.
• Open the Fonts Tab, and mark your most used fonts as favourites. Then they will appear at the top of the font selection drop list. However, if you set up your styles properly, you will spend less time selecting fonts. Save the relevant Windows registry key (search the registry for “Font Collections”) as a backup. It also saves the most recently used fonts.

Legacy Features

Baseline Grid • Colours and Swatches • Edit in External Program • EPUB3 • High DPI • Paragraph Tab

Placeable PDF Import • Table Format Gallery • Column Rules • TWAIN/WIA Scanning64-bit Version

Blend Modes • Charts • Complex Fills • Convert to Objects • Export as Picture • Flowing Tables

Improved Studios • Restore Last Session • Serif GDI Rendering • Smart Hints • Startup Assistant

Workspace Enhancements • Anchored Objects • Asset Management • Customising • Dynamic Guides

Image Cutout Studio • Improved PDF Import • Interface Improvements • Logo Studio • OpenType Features • Photo Lab • Picture Frames and Borders • Polygon Operations • Resource Manager • Stroke Alignment

Table and Calendar Formats • Text Improvements • Word and OpenOffice Import

Baseline Grid

If the baseline grid is enabled in Options, any paragraph style that has “Snap to baseline grid” enabled will be moved down to fit the next baseline grid line. This feature automatically aligns the baselines of text on facing pages or in multiple columns, for a neater page layout. Individual text frames can have their own independent baseline grid for aligning of baselines in columns within text frames.

Colours and Swatches

The Colour Tab has been enhanced with a new mode to select colours from a picture. The Swatches Tab can be cleaned up or updated from the publication. leaving only those colours that have been used. The Colour Replacer can replace one colour with another.

Edit in External Program

Instead of Edit in PhotoPlus, the Image context toolbar now shows a drop list of programs that may be used to edit an image. PhotoPlus will be added by default if it is installed. Other programs can be added: PhotoShop, IrfanView, FastStone Capture, etc.

PhotoPlus will open in the background.

EPUB3

The latest specification for electronic publications is better suited to fixed layout publications. Users can now choose between fixed and free-flowing formats.

High DPI

PagePlus is now designed for use on High resolution displays. Icons sets in different sizes can be chosen in Tools, Options. As displays have more pixels, icons and menus become tiny when using older software. Changing the Windows DPI settings will now automatically use larger icons with more pixels.

Paragraph Tab

The most frequently used paragraph formatting options are now available from a Tab on the right of the workspace. This adds nothing that cannot be done from the Format, paragraph dialogue. In general, it is better to use styles to apply formatting changes globally. However, when you do want to change a setting for the current paragraph or a few paragraphs only, this makes it a bit quicker.

Placeable PDF Import

This is one of those long awaited features requested by professional users. It is especially useful for those who are publishing newspapers and magazines for placing advertisements. PDF files can be placed exactly as they are provided without the problems of missing fonts, etc.

Column Rules

The text frame properties dialogue has an option to add column rules to the gutter to the right of the current column. Different line styles can be applied using the line tab after selecting the gutter — I have used a fancy line ending too with Internal Line Endings.

Text frames can also be set to “mirrored,” on Recto and Verso pages, and baseline grids can be enabled for text frames.

Table Format Gallery

The table format editor in previous versions has been updated with a more accessible method for editing, saving, and applying table formats.

TWAIN/WIA Scanning

A bit of code to form a bridge between the 64-bit version of PagePlus and 32-bit scanner drivers will enable more scanners to work with 64-bit PagePlus.

64-bit Version

The 64-bit version supports more RAM, which may help when working with large or image-heavy publications. Some users may have problems with finding suitable drivers for scanners. Scan images in another application and insert them using the Insert Picture route. That way, images can be compressed properly, and then linked.

Blend Modes

Added to bring PagePlus into line with DrawPlus and improve PDF import. Creative professionals may find a use for it to save opening another application. Blend Modes are on the Colour Studio Tab.

Charts

Two new studio tabs — the Chart Tab and the Chart Data Tab — support this feature. It is now possible to insert the usual chart types into PagePlus, and link them to a table or to tabular data.

There is a good range of standard Chart types — Area, Bar, Column, Line, Pie, Scatter, 3D Column, etc., — and an almost unlimited range of options for formatting them. 3D charts have all of the controls of other 3D objects.

The Charts category of the Styles tab contains a range of standard chart styles, to which user-defined chart styles can be added.

The chart title, series titles, and labels all use the Chart Body paragraph text style, but user-defined styles can be applied to each text group. Elements within the chart can be resized, moved, and rotated. The illustrated chart has its title moved to the left, and the series text moved to the right. The entire chart object has a drop shadow applied from the Effects Tab.

Complex Fills

The swatches tab now contains plasma fills, radial fills, square, and three or four colour fills. Again, not something that is important to a page layout program, but creative professionals will appreciate not having to open another application to creative graphics to import into PagePlus.

Convert to Objects

Similar to “Convert to Curves,” but it preserves text in Serif metafiles or data pasted from DrawPlus via the Windows clipboard, allowing imported vector graphics to be fully editable in PagePlus.

Export as Picture

PagePlus X7 added an Export as Picture dialogue like DrawPlus, which generates a preview before exporting, and provides options for selecting Super Sampling, Compression, Colour-depth, etc., and shows the projected file size. On older PCs this extra step slows down the export of pictures if you already know the settings that you want to use. Using the “Super Sample” option will slow it down even more, but it does improve the image quality. In the screen shot below you can compare the image quality of fully compressed 32-bit transparent PNG against JPG at a high quality setting of 90%. Because this image is just text and a gradient fill, the PNG image is of a similar size, but sharper than the JPG image, where artefacts can be clearly seen at increased zoom levels.

PagePlus offers the option to export to SVG — a vector format designed for the web. PPX9 adds support for EPS (Encapsulated Postscript), and WebP, and if the image has a portrait aspect ratio two previews will be tiled vertically, but if it has a landscape aspect ratio they will be tiled horizontally.

Flowing Tables

Tables are no longer limited to a single page, but can be flowed down or to the right onto other pages, or on the same page. Rows or Columns can be selected to repeat in each section. Data from spreadsheets or word-processor tables that are longer than a single page can be cut and pasted into a PagePlus table that flows to more than one page.

Improved Studio Tabs

Studio tabs have been a valuable feature of PagePlus for several versions. Three new studio tabs have been added to this version — Charts, Chart Data, and Effects. The HowTo studio tab was removed, and the fx dialogue was replaced with the Effects Tab. The docking and management of Studio tabs has been revamped to increase the options for possible layouts, and to make them easier to use. Auto-hide now allows floating tabs to hide away after use with having to collapse them. As soon as the mouse cursor is over the tab group on auto-hide, it flies open. It can be pinned open using the middle icon of the three on the right, or left unpinned to collapse soon after moving the cursor away. Tab groups can be maximised, minimised, or restored. Tool-tips have been made to match the Toolbar tips.

Restore Last Session

In Tools, Options, General, users can choose from three options on startup: Show Startup Assistant, Restore Last Session, or Create New Document. Restore last session will open PagePlus with the same publications that were previously opened, and each will be displayed at the same page and the same zoom level as last time. If the windows were tiled, or a new document window was opened, the window layout will also be restored. This is a huge time-saver for long books or projects involving more than one publication. Quickly resume work without having to reopen publications and find your place.

N.B. If multi-page view was in use, although this will be restored, the layout and position will not.

SerifGDI Rendering

Improved performance and quality of rendering on the screen. The page tab especially will benefit from this to generate thumbnails of the current publication.

Smart Hints

Like DrawPlus, popup notifications will advise the user when performing certain actions. When no longer needed, they can be disabled in Tools, Options, Smart Hints.

Startup Assistant

This is the Startup Wizard by a new name, but with some new and improved features. It replaces the Browse dialogue that was removed from earlier versions with previews of publications opened in the previous days and weeks. The learning zone provides quick access to videos, help, the manual, the support forums, and Facebook support. A news feed keeps the user informed of recent developments. Templates can also be opened from here.

Workspace Enhancements

Workspaces have been around as long as the Studio Tabs. In previous versions one could save and load customised workspaces to suit different projects. Toolbars and menus could be customised before too, but to backup changes entailed a two-step process of exporting a Windows registry key and copying a file from the %AppData% folder. In PPX7, the toolbars and menus are now saved with the workspace, so the user only needs to copy the relevant *.wtb file from the %AppData%\Workspace Profiles\ folder to an external drive to make a backup. A drop-list on the context toolbar makes it easy to switch workspaces.

Remember to save any changes made to the toolbars, menus, or studio tab layout to a workspace file before selecting another one.

Anchored Objects

Images, Tables, Text Frames, Artistic Text, or groups can be anchored relative to the page, page margins, frame, column, or character.

Asset Management -

The Assets studio tab replaced the Media Bar, Insert Logo dialogue, and Gallery Tab. This requires makes it easier to associate content with publications, and adds the possibility of saving asset packs for sharing content.

Assets can be pinned so that they are always available. In the screen shot of the Assets tab on the right the logos are pinned in the Graphics category, so that they can be dragged to any new document.

Warning: Assets are loaded with the document, so pinning too many assets will slow down document loading This may be very significant with large images on old hardware.

Groups of objects can be saved in My Designs from where they can be dragged onto the page for reuse.

Customised borders can be added to the Picture Frames category, but can no longer be saved for quick access from the Line and Border dialogue.

The backgrounds category is new and offers a quick and easy way to add a background layer to a publication or web site. Background layers are locked. To edit them, open the layers tab to unlock them.

The Pictures category replaces the Media Bar tab from PagePlus X5. I find it easier to insert pictures from disk by browsing to find what I want using the Windows Explorer previews. In my opinion, adding large picture collections to the assets tab is a waste of time and resources.

Customising Toolbars, Menus, and Keyboard

Since PagePlus X3 it has been possible to customise the toolbars and menus. Right-click on any toolbar or the menu to open the customise dialogue. Right-click again on the menu to customise it, or on any toolbar button to change the button, paste a new image from the clipboard or import an icon from disk.

Create new menus, new toolbars, or new flyouts to have all the commands that you use most frequently wherever you want them. WebPlus uses the same interface for customising the GUI.

The scanner icon was extracted from the VueScan executable using @IconSushi, scaled to 20x20 pixels using IrfanView, then imported to the button editor using the folder icon.

The keyboard can be customised, greatly increasing workflow. Read my Customising Tutorials for more details.

Dynamic Guides

Easier alignment and positioning of objects using dynamic guides. Align objects to each other, to the page margin or page edges. This is a huge time-saver when laying out pages. Objects just snap into place where they are most likely to be needed. Nudge is also customisable to position objects more accurately.

E-Book Publishing -

I anticipate that this exciting new feature will encourage many to upgrade or migrate to PagePlus. I also expect that it will generate a storm of questions on the support forums as new users struggle with new concepts. Some may be frustrated if they expect to just open any existing publication, choose the publish to E-book option, and expect it to just work. Publishing for hand-held E-readers like the Kindle requires an entirely different design approach to print or PDF publishing. If, like me, you have no previous experience in designing E-books, be prepared to read the manual, and to redesign your publications to suit the free-flowing layout used by this format.

Image Cutout Studio - Help Topic

Any photograph can be edited within PagePlus to remove its background. The intelligent masking brushes in the Cutout Studio are faster and easier to use than other magic wand tools I have used. Even the most intricate backgrounds can be removed quite easily by adjusting the tolerance and size of the brushes. Hold the Alt key to toggle the brush function between remove and add. Many image backgrounds take just a few strokes of the brush to remove. Zooming and Panning with a scroll-wheel mouse is just as easy as in the main PagePlus window, so for detailed work one doesn’t need to keep changing tools.

After removing the background you can preview how it looks with a transparent background, or a uniform tint. The mask can be saved as a Vector-cropped Bitmap, or as an Alpha-edged Bitmap. The HowTo help in the Image Cutout Studio guides new users through the process.

Improved PDF Import

Imported PDF documents have fewer text blocks and greater accuracy. Optimise for accuracy or for text flow. Crop to page area leaving registration marks on the pasteboard. Embed fonts to allow document editing if permitted. With improvements to the manual flowing of text between frames, PagePlus is now a viable choice for editing PDF files if the source document is no longer available.

Interface Improvements

• Document Tabs — The new Publication Tabs toolbar can be shown automatically if more than one document is open, or left permanently shown or hidden. Tabs can be arranged in any order by dragging, and closed from a context-sensitive menu. The toolbar can be docked vertically on the side of the window, docked at the top or bottom, or left floating.
• The Text Styles Palette now includes a field to show any direct formatting that has been applied on top of the current paragraph style.
• Saving defaults has been made simpler. A dialogue with four checkboxes offers a choice of which defaults to save: document and object defaults, text styles, object styles, and Table/Calendar formats.
• The shortcut customisation dialogue now shows a warning if a shortcut is already used in another context.
• The snapping icon on the hintline has a popup menu to select from the most popular snapping options.
• Rotated Tables can be unrotated for easier editing by double-clicking just outside the resizing handles with the pointer tool . Double-click again after editing to reinstate the original rotation.
• Starting page numbers can be entered as Roman numerals or Alpha characters, not only as integers.

Logo Studio

The popular, but outdated LogoPlus was replaced by Logo Studio. Users can edit any group of objects as a Logo within PagePlus, using an alternate interface focused on logo creation. The Logo Studio has its own customisable toolbars, studio tabs, guidelines, and a HowTo tab to help new users learn how to create logos. A wide range of predesigned logos provide the artistically challenged with some design ideas to get them started.

OpenType Features

The implementation of OpenType features is particularly slick. For example, enabling Small Capitals, ligatures, or fractions in the Character formatting dialogue will use OpenType features automatically if those features exist in a font. If not, PagePlus will create Small Capitals by scaling capitals in the usual way, use ligatures if they exist in the font, and generate fractions using bold superscripts/subscripts. Times New Roman contains ligatures for fi and fl. Any fraction will be auto-generated, including fractions with text like 1/x.

Common OpenType features can be toggled on/off using an icon on the context toolbar, and formatting attributes have a new icon to replace the underline icon, which can toggle the last used character attribute on/off with one click. The formatting fly-out can be detached as a floating palette.

Some fonts like Palatino Linotype have OpenType features that use glyphs with no code-points. Unless you know about these special glyphs you may never see them. Palatino also includes a full set of Petite Capitals. The Insert Symbol dialogue has a radio button to show Glyphs instead of Unicode.

When the radio button is enabled all of the glyphs in the font are sorted by their glyph index, and the Character Code is shown as G+nnnn (Glyph Index) instead of U+nnnn (Unicode code-point). Palatino Linotype is particularly unusual as the glyphs are not sorted in strict Unicode order. However, be aware that since it uses the glyph index, if the font is changed, another font may well have a different glyph in that position or no glyph at all, resulting in the .notdef glyph being displayed instead.

Photo Lab -

An image adjustment studio with Quick Artistic effects, adjustment filters, and special effects. This powerful new feature can almost replace PhotoPlus, though you will still need PhotoPlus if you want to import RAW images or for extensive retouching and painting of images.

Filters are non-destructive — by default the original image is stored along with any changes made. This greatly increases the file size though, so you may prefer to disable the option in raster effects to save adjusted bitmaps. This will also speed up document loading.

Photo Lab is so powerful I never need to open PhotoPlus to apply effects to images.

Picture Frames and Borders

Create custom borders from bitmaps. A wide selection of artistic picture frames is provided, but you can define your own, and they will be shown at the top of the list. The 1" border on the right was applied to a text frame on an A4 page. Mouse-over the image to see how it looks at 0.75" and click for a 0.5" border.

In PPX6 or later, the Picture Frames can be found in the Assets tab. Drag them onto the page and then insert a picture, or drag and drop them onto a picture to add the border to the picture.

In PPX4 or earlier, to add them to a text frame, table or Quick Shape, open the Line and Border dialogue from the Format menu, and select a border from the drop list. From this dialogue you can define the border’s width, the edges to apply it to, and whether to scale it with the object.

To define a custom border, create a graphic with patterns that will repeat on the sides and top, and corners that are used only once. Import the image into the line and border dialogue, and open the widths dialogue to define where the image will be split. Drag the lines to define the areas that will repeat and those that will not. If you want the centre to be drawn too, check the “Draw Centre” option on the border dialogue. I used an image of about 1800 x 1200 pixels @ 300 dpi, but 1200 x 800 pixels would probably have been good enough — 96 dpi was not.

Polygon Operations

More versatile shapes can be created by combining or intersecting existing shapes, e.g. a quick arrow and a quick donut like this.

Resource Manager

More flexible management of resources. The picture properties dialogue has been replaced. Instead the Resource Manager opens showing a thumbnail preview of the picture and details about it.

Images can be exported or replaced from the resource manager. Linked files can be embedded, and embedded files can be made linked. To locate the file in the document, double-click the asset name or click on the locate button. Sort document assets by filename, size, etc., by clicking on the column headers.

Stroke Alignment

Alignment of objects to the inside, outside, or centre of strokes. Lines and borders can be inside, outside, or centred on the object’s fill.

The screen shot shows a 0.5” square with a 50% transparent yellow fill, a 6 point cyan border behind the fill, mitred joins, and inner, centre, and outer stroke alignment.

Table Formats

Table and Calendar Autoformat Editor — Create calendar and table formats to apply to any calendar or table. Define table header and footer rows, header and footer columns, and repeating rows/columns. Apply fonts, fills, transparency, and borders as part of the cell definition.

This custom format for a Year Planner has a Header row for the year and title, another Header row (Caption) for the days of the week, a Header Column for the months, and footers for other details. The Weekdays and Saturdays/Sundays repeat, with different cell formatting, until the footer column. The month row repeats until the footer row.

Text Improvements

• Adaptive Letter Spacing — This feature improves text justification by condensing or expanding the spacing between characters wherever necessary. Not only does justified text look better, copyfit is improved by as much as 5%
• Finer control over Tracking and Kerning, now in 0.1% increments. In previous versions the 1% increment gave only three or four usable values. To change manual kerning for artistic text, use the slider on the character tab.
• INITIAL WORDS — Format the initial words of a paragraph with Caps, Small Caps, Bold, a different font etc. Very useful in conjunction with Drop Capitals, or without them.
• The enter key now turns off numbered and bulleted lists if the last line is blank.
• The bucket tool can be used to join text frames and create new frames. Click on the overflow icon, then drag with the bucket tool to create a linked frame.
• Revamped default text styles palette to allow different default paragraph styles for different types of text object.
• Improved Table Quick Fill for European languages.
• Show·Special·Characters » » Show/hide·non-printing·characters·such·as·line,┘
  column,·frame,·and·page breaks,·date·fields·and/or·spaces·in·layout·view.¶
• Insert a zero width space to add optional line-breaks without the hyphen.

Word and OpenOffice Import

Import OpenOffice (aka LibreOffice) and Word Docx documents without either program installed. Import most text formatting, footnotes, graphics, tables with formatting, index marks, and paragraph styles.

Tutorials

I have added this tutorial section with tips and tricks to get the most out of PagePlus using some of its more advanced features. The Online PagePlus X9 Help is the first place to look.

All of the tutorials presented as PDF files were produced using PagePlus. Most are also relevant to earlier versions of PagePlus, and some to other Serif Applications such as DrawPlus or WebPlus.

• Access Keys on Menus — Modify menus to remove submenus wherever possible, ensuring that all items have a unique access key. The PagePlus source file serves as a template. Examples are given for DrawPlus X8, PagePlus X9, PhotoPlus X8, and WebPlus X8.
• Adding Captions to Images — Using endnotes for sequentially numbered captions for illustrations, and a list of illustrations.
• Advanced Typography — How to use Optical Justification, Tracking, Kerning and Adaptive Letter Spacing to improve the appearance of printed text, and to save paper.
• Creating Graph Paper — An exercise in using layers and the replicate feature, with precise positioning using the Transform Tab to create an A4 graph paper with 1 cm, 0.5 cm, and 1mm grids in different colours and line weights. The tutorial is in PagePlus X8 format.
• Custom Borders — Importing borders from PagePlus X3 or earlier and saving them for reuse in more recent versions. Using the Assets Tab to add borders in PPX6 or later.
• Customising PagePlus — Getting the most out of PagePlus by customising the Toolbars, Tabs, Menus, Shortcuts, and Styles. Much of the advice is relevant to other Serif™ applications.
• PDF version of the above tutorial for users of early versions of PagePlus that cannot open PagePlus X9 publications (X5 or earlier).
• Customising PhotoPlus — PhotoPlus is not yet as customisable as PagePlus, but all of the basics are available. Customise toolbars, menus, workspaces, and keyboard shortcuts.
• Customising WebPlus — WebPlus shares most of the features with PagePlus for customising the menus, toolbars, shortcuts, and workspaces, but there are a few differences.
• Customising Keyboard Shortcuts — This tutorial in PagePlus format with tables that you can modify to make a cheat sheet of your own keyboard shortcuts.
• Designing a Book in PagePlus — This tutorial suggests a workflow for setting up a book for printing, staple-fold home production, or publication as a PDF file.
• Formatting Footnotes — This tutorial shows how to format footnotes in columns at the bottom of the page, how to modify footnote options, and how to insert cross-references to footnotes.
• Headers, Footers, and Page Numbering — How to set up running headers, bottom centre page numbers on title pages, and define separate page numbering sections for long books.
• Logos — How to create text in a circle for logos. Type artistic text directly on a path, select a preset path after typing the text, or select artistic text and a curve, then fit text to path.
• Looking Inside Documents — How to extract Serif documents, to repair or examine the contents. Sometimes, corrupted files can be repaired with the help of 7-Zip.
• OpenType Features — An explanation of the OpenType features supported in all recent Serif Applications. You can find several free fonts with OpenType features on my fonts page.
• Optimising PDF Files — Using different PDF profiles to control file size and image quality. Optimising images before placing them to minimise file size without compromising quality.
• Sharing Dictionaries — Using the same User Dictionaries (word lists) with multiple Serif Products: PPX7, PPX8, PPX9, WPX7, WPX8, etc.
• Styles — Using paragraph, character, nested, and object styles. The updated tutorial on Customising PagePlus is in PagePlus X9 format.
• Text Behind Image — Using the irregular crop tool to make text on top of an image look like it passes behind a head (or other object) in an image.
• Tickets — Create event tickets or raffle tickets with a tear-off ticket stub. Designed with three leading zeros for up to 9,999 tickets. Add more pages for more than 100 tickets.
• Translation Layers — Create multi-lingual publications by using layers. Hide other layers while editing the current translation, and while printing the finished publication, one language at a time.
• Vertical Text — Create vertical text for signs that read downwards using artistic text or paragraph text.
• Working With Fractions — Using OpenType features, or using autocorrect to enter the precomposed fractions found in other fonts. How to get the best looking results.
• Working With Indexes — Adding multiple entries, Locating and Editing Entries, Adding an Index of Proper Names, Formatting Indexes using Find and Replace with Regular Expressions, working around bugs in hyphenation.
• Working With Pictures — Inserting multiple images, using picture frames, adding frame borders, and creating custom borders. Image dimensions, resolution, quality, and file size. Resizing, exporting, and manipulating images. Linking versus embedding images.

Significant Bug Fixes

Autocorrect option for numbered list breaks data entry for tables. (see this CommunityPlus thread)

Difficult to place text cursor next to column gutter. (see this CommunityPlus thread)

Gutters and Rules not saved with Text Frame defaults. (see this CommunityPlus thread)

Text rotated on some imported PDF files (see this CommunityPlus thread)

Table Quick Fill bug fix for H I > H I J K L instead of H I II III IV (this old bug goes back to PagePlus X6. Some bugs don’t affect enough users to deserve attention)

Bugs Remaining After Patch 19.2.0.22

These bugs are old,* and these are new in PagePlus X9.**

Constrain fill rotation by 15° increments modifier key shift does nothing.**

Drop Caps Use Advance Widths of Caps for Word Start Alternates.*

Edit in PhotoPlus Opens in Background.** (see this CommunityPlus thread)

Image Cutout Studio Converts PNG to WDP.*

Images set to use a line border are not placed at their native resolution and will be distorted unless they have a square aspect ratio.* (See this CommunityPlus post).

No minimum width of Studios† (in PPX5 resizing it to < 50 pixels docks it shut)

Opening the Options dialogue while editing returns focus to the top of the text frame.*

Picture frame borders are inverted if created from cropped pictures.*

Place as raster does not work as expected for EPS images.** (See this CommunityPlus thread).

Table sort is not available for split tables.*

Underlining does not align with dot leaders …* (see this CommunityPlus thread)

Windows jump lists do not respond as they should in Windows 7.**

Deprecated Features

• Assign Insert and other Reserved key shortcuts to commands
• HowTo Studio Tab (replaced with Smart Hints: Tools, Options, User Interface)
• Kerning shortcuts Ctrl+Alt+Plus/Minus and Ctrl+Alt+Equals/Hyphen perform coarse adjustments of 0.12 points for 12 point text (1%) in PPX9 instead of 0.012 points (0.1%) as in PPX8 or earlier versions. Cursor key shortcuts Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right do fine kerning, while shortcuts Alt+Left/Right do coarse kerning.
• Media Bar and Gallery Tab (replaced with the Assets Tab)
• Unable to open PagePlus X9 publications in earlier versions (PagePlus X2 to X5).
  Workaround: Open and save in PPX8 to PPX6, then open those versions in PPX2 to PPX5.
• Studio Tab Animation
• Studio Tab Auto-optimizer
• Web Publishing Mode (replaced with Export to HTML)

Page last updated on 06 August 2020

Serif WebPlus was a website design program^[2] for Microsoft Windows, developed by a software company Serif. It allows users to design, create and upload their website onto the internet without any knowledge of HTML or other web technologies.

Much like Microsoft Word, WebPlus uses WYSIWYG^[3]drag and drop editing to add and position text, images and links as they would appear on the finished web page. Once a user has designed their site, WebPlus can preview the site in a web browser before uploading the site using the in-built FTP.

The software comes with a variety of pre-designed sample websites containing Filler text like Lorem ipsum, which can be used as a template for quickly designing a site. It also provides drawing tools for creating and editing buttons and web graphics.

Free WebPlus Starter Edition[edit]

Previously Serif had made available feature limited Starter Editions of their software, based on older versions, which could be obtained and used free of charge. For WebPlus the final free edition was based on version X5 and this was released in September 2012. This continued to be available from Serif's server until it was withdrawn around March 2016. WebPlus was then only available as a paid-for version X8.^{[citation needed]}

License Code Hack[edit]

Around mid-2014, the algorithm used to generate the product keys across the entire Serif "Plus" software collection was broken. This enabled unlicensed copies of all the Serif programs issued prior to that date to be installed by means of a third party code-generator software. This software provided a way to make the new code (key) needed at the time of each program installation.

Serif responded by patching some program installers and making these versions freely downloadable from their website. The patched versions detected and blocked the codes generated by the third party key software. 2014 and later issued patches for older software also included detection and splash screen indication of suspected third party codes. Serif also withdrew the installers for older versions of their programs that were not under active development, and thus were not patched against the third party codes (e.g. all versions of MoviePlus), to try to prevent users circulating the now effectively unlocked software, and to block its entry into the public domain.

With WebPlus for example, the original X7 disc media was open to the use of third party codes. However Serif's downloadable patches for X7 to v15.0.2.31, v15.0.3.35 and v15.0.4.38 (final), reported detection of these "unauthorised code"s but allowed the software to continue to operate. Conversely the publicly downloadable WebPlus X8 installation file from Serif appears to accept a third party key during installation, but reports an "unauthorised code" and then terminates the program operation on startup.

Program Withdrawal[edit]

In March 2016, Serif announced that WebPlus X8 would be the final version, and that there were no current plans to design an application to replace it. Sales of WebPlus X8 by Serif were ended around December 2016.

In early 2018, Serif announced that Serif Web Resources, hosted on Serif servers and required to implement some advanced web-site functionality in WebPlus created sites, would no longer work after 31 August 2018.

In 2018, Serif also shutdown the servers that generated the "Plus" software registration numbers on-line (activation codes in Microsoft jargon) from the product version and the individual generated installation number. Serif revealed the alternative was to use a universal master registration number, which is 881887. This is known to work with post 2003 Serif "Plus" software (e.g. verified to work with PagePlus v5.02). However, later Serif "Plus" software still registers itself automatically if within a certain recent period of a previous Serif software registration on the same PC.

Supported platforms[edit]

WebPlus was developed for Microsoft Windows "Win32" graphical desktop interface and is fully compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista (32/64bit), Windows 7 (32/64bit) and Windows 8.^[4]

Features[edit]

• Web hosting to upload websites to the internet with the address www.sitename.webplus.net and email sitename@webplus.net.^[5]
• E-Commerce tool to create online stores with providers such as PayPal.^[6]
• Form wizard generates online forms to collect information from website visitors.
• Add blogs, forums, hit counters, online polls and content management systems to websites using Smart Objects.
• Google Maps tool embeds maps and optional navigation markers within a website.
• Site navigation bars adopt a website's structure providing a tool for navigating around the website.
• Photo gallery groups a collection of images together and displays them as an animated slideshow.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) tools optimise a websites search ranking with the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
• Collect website metrics such as page popularity and number of website hits using Google Analytics.
• WebPlus X5 introduced a button studio for creating button graphics.
• Restrict access to specific pages on a website with a secure member's area.
• WebPlus automatically converts images and graphics into a web targeted format, optimising them for fast download.
• Embed YouTube videos within a web page.
• Add animated effects to a website with Animated GIFs, Animated Marquees or by importing Flash videos.
• Stream news and information feeds to a website using RSS and podcasts.
• Automated Site Checker analyses and corrects potential problems with a website.
• AdSense tool incorporates Google AdSense advertisements into a website
• In-built FTP transfers files onto a web server, uploading a website to the internet.
• In-built Basic Photo Editor the PhotoLab can make automatic adjustments and "Quick Fix's" to photos.
• From X5, WebPlus offers image editing and filters, through its PhotoLab and also provides a dedicated background-removal tool in the form of Cutout Studio.^[7]
• Display images, Flash videos and web pages using animated Lightboxes.
• Filter Effects can be applied to the graphical objects, giving convincing, realistic effects such as glass, metallic, plastic and other 2D/3D filters.^[8]
• WebPlus also provides QuickShapes for creating button and web graphics. These predefined shapes can be quickly modified with sliders to adjust certain parameters, for example creating rounded rectangles, etc. Shapes include: rectangles, ellipses, stars, spirals, cogs, petals, etc.^[9]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

External links[edit]

• WebPlus Serif's Official website page (now dead link) [1] Archived Version
• [2] Software Reviews page - with detailed information on Serif's WebPlus