What makes Publisher different is its automated approach to design through its colour and font schemes and huge range of publication templates. These are handled via the redesigned Task Pane, which now has a simplified Start panel offering drill-down access to project types split into print, Web and themed sets. Another ten attractive master sets increase the total to 45.
The changes are partly cosmetic, but there's more control over line and paragraph breaks too. Publisher also adds some advanced design capabilities of its own.Welcome is support for multiple master page backgrounds and the ability to drag and drop the page icons on the status bar to reorder your publication. Two new design areas are explored: data-driven and email publications. The former is handled with the new Catalog Merge command, combining pictures and text from a data source to produce anything from address books to product catalogues, and for email, Publisher offers six new HTML-based publication types.
Publisher has always been fine for printing internal documents, but not for commercial print. This version moves in the right direction with an enhanced Design Checker to spot potential problems, an improved Graphics Manager Task Pane for checking embedded graphics, the ability to convert from spot colour to process and vice versa, and the ability to convert RGB to CMYK.
It can also create CMYK composite PostScript files for colour separation. Sadly, though, you can't output to PDF.
For the Web, Publisher trounces other design packages with its comprehensive dedicated tools and the ability to repurpose print publications. New features include the Website Builder Wizard, which sets up pages for your site. Further improvements include more control over navigation bars and support for incremental uploading, so only changed pages are posted to your server.
Publisher produces impressive Web results, but there are limitations. The publication-based approach is only suited to sites with a limited number of pages. Plus, the final code, based on reams of application-specific XML, goes against the spirit of the streamlined HTML-based Web.