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Bill's (very) latest excellent adventureMicrosoft's new Publisher 97 arrives at the door with a new Internet sales pitch. As Microsoft chief Bill Gates has already shown with Internet Explorer 3 and Frontpage, Microsoft now wants to dominate the Web. So no longer does Microsoft's desktop publishing program merely create well-turned-out newsletters, resumes, birthday cards and other paper-printed matter. Now, like Word and Excel and everything else in Bill Gates' refocused empire, Publisher 97 does Web sites as well. And it promises "effective, high-impact publications and Web sites in a few easy steps". Yes, sir, it offers everything
you need! It's a floor wax! It's a dessert pudding!
Ease-of use: 10/10 and a star from the teacherCan Publisher 97 live up to this two-for-one sales spiel? Turn on the pro- gram and the first signs impress. Microsoft is throwing money and brains at the task of making programs easier to use. So Publisher 97 takes the entire "wizard" notion a step further than it's been taken before, presenting you with choice after choice for a tailored design. And the Publisher screen now boasts perhaps the best on-line help around - not just the normal library of topics, but an accessible list of sensible choices on what to do next. When you crank up the Page Wizard with a Web site in mind, you can quickly grab yourself one of the several pre-built Web site templates and start adapting it. The package follows most of the usual desktop publishing conventions: you move text and pictures around in frames, clicking buttons to add images and hyperlinks that will take viewers to other sites. When you're ready, you publish your site using Microsoft's Web Publishing Wizard - which, through the medium of the Publisher program, I was able to use effectively for the first time. The whole program is clearly designed to overcome the biggest complaint of new Web page authors - that they can't move Web page elements around in the manner that desk-top publishing programs have led them to expect. Publisher 97 also sports that rarity of the software world, a fine manual. The "Publisher 97 Companion" displays not just 70 pages of clip art, but an articulate 194-page exposition of publishing ideas and document design. For instance, notes accompanying each of the 90 well-chosen fonts describe their uses as well as any short guide available. The Web page design section tells the right story too, even if Microsoft's software can't live up to it. Publisher 97 was made by people trying hard to do things right. So is Publisher 97 the Next Big Thing in Web page design - the tool which
does not bewilder first-time Web page creators, but which still lets them
create rich, effective, original pages?
On the Web: 5/10I came to the verge of thinking Publisher a real breakthrough, a floor wax which tasted just great with ice-cream. Then I previewed my first test page. If it didn't exactly look wrong, it didn't look right either. What had been a tight if unimaginative test page was suddenly transformed into a a very loose-looking effort, dominated by acres of white space. It looked odd in Microsoft's own Internet Explorer and markedly worse in Netscape Navigator. The actual result is posted here. As I checked in the hours afterwards, the entire program can only really
make pages this way. By inserting blank areas across your Web pages, Microsoft
fall just short of its boast that you'll create "effective, high-impact publications-
and Web sites in a few easy steps".
Verdict: Publisher may yet get thereTruth is, floor wax doesn't easily transform into dessert. For the moment, for creating truly professional-looking pages, Publisher 97 stands one rank behind dedicated Web site tools like Claris Home Page, the freeware AOLPress, Corel's Web.Designer and Microsoft's own FrontPage. Painless desktop publishing for the Internet , everyone's desire, still eludes us. Yet with Publisher 97, Microsoft has come closer than delivering it than any software creator before it. For people who know desk-top publishing and don't want to learn more than the barest minimum about the separate discipline of Web publishing, Publisher 97 is a solution, if not an elegant one. And Publisher 97 still does newsletter, birthday cards, order forms and paper planes very nicely for around $105. No great dessert yet, but it waxes the floors just fine. And the way Microsoft is throwing itself at the Web, you can't help but suspect that the web-capable Publisher of 1999 will taste pretty good. If that suspicion is right, Microsoft may come close to dominating mass-market Web page creation. As these pages have noted before, no-one else is trying harder.
Microsoft offers Publisher 97 for a 60-day trial at its own site.
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