Serif made its name by introducing DTP to people who, at that time, couldn't afford PageMaker. With WebPlus, it does the same thing today for people who can't afford Dreamweaver. WebPlus also takes a lot of the complication - that is, HTML - out of web design, although you can still get your hands dirty with a bit of hard coding if you really want to.

WebPlus is based very much on the desktop publishing paradigm, although it's clearly geared towards electronic rather than paper pages. Many of the tools are similar, with lines, simple graphics, artistic text and text frames, but there are also web-specific ones such as HTML and Java fragments, HTML tables and sound and video clips.

The interface now relies heavily on tabbed dockers down the right-hand side of the screen, so you can get at a huge range of attributes without having to dive deep into the menus. A good deal of assistance is provided in the form of professionally designed colour schemes and style sheets, and there are even a number of templates for complete sites. If you're really pushed for time, you can call up a template and simply modify it with your own text.

Despite it being intended for newcomers to web design, parts of WebPlus 10 have become quite complex in themselves. It's good, then, that Serif has one of the best documentation teams in the business - the online help and user manual are exemplars of clarity, providing design tips as well as full explanations of complicated concepts.

New to version 10 are ecommerce tools, Smart Objects and the source pane. If you want to include the ability to sell goods or services from your site, you now have the basic tools to do it. You can directly add PayPal facilities - or rivals RomanCart or Mal's - to a page using a wizard.

The program adds extra pages to your site with all the appropriate buttons and graphics on them for your visitors to use. And you can even specify the style for these pages, so they don't stick out like sore thumbs from the rest of your site.