• Illustration: Creating a Publisher Web Site

Publisher 2003 provides entry-level desktop publishing features that make it easy for users to create marketing materials, such as business cards, brochures, product literature, and newsletters for print, e-mail, and Web site publishing. With Publisher replacing FrontPage in some editions of Office, Publisher is becoming Microsoft's entry-level tool for Web site publishing. However, developing a Web site in Publisher means maintaining that site in Publisher throughout its life.

Improvements in Publisher 2003

Microsoft will include Publisher 2003 in several Office 2003 editions, including Office Professional Edition 2003, Professional Enterprise Edition 2003, and Small Business Edition 2003.

The ninth version of Publisher since 1991, Publisher 2003 does not contain any radically new features. Incremental improvements were made in a variety of areas, including new Master Design Sets (which ensure a consistent look and feel between publications), the ability to create publications for e-mail delivery, improved compatibility with other Office programs, and improved support for sending publications to commercial printers.

New Master Design Sets. Publisher 2003 includes ten new Master Design Sets (for a total of 45). Master Design Sets apply a similar theme to all elements of a publication, such as fonts, color schemes, images, and white space. A Master Design Set ensures that all publications will have a standard and professional look, and the same theme can be applied consistently to print, e-mail, and Web publications.

E-mail publications. Users can create event announcements, product brochures and lists, letters, and newsletters for e-mail delivery.

Improved Office compatibility. Publisher is integrated with other Office products, such as Word and Excel. For example, "Catalog Merge" merges pictures and text from data sources, such as Word, Excel and Access, into publications such as a product catalog or sales brochure.

Improved output to commercial printers. A design checker catches common errors, such as text in an overflow area or an incorrectly scaled image, and the Pack and Go feature is used to prepare publications for printing at a commercial printer. For example, the Pack and Go feature can help a user to embed TrueType fonts (and make a list of any fonts that cannot be embedded), split large publications across multiple disks, and print a composite and separation proof. Support for outputting for commercial printing has been improved. For example, Publisher 2003 now supports CMYK Composite Postscript output, which supports four-color separations.

Publisher as a Web Site Tool

Publisher can be used to create a simple Web site, and using a Master Design Set ensures the Web site has the same style and layout as other publications. A user can create a Web site in much the same way that she creates any publication with Publisher, by opening a Master Design Set and adding text and graphics. (For an example, see the illustration "Creating a Publisher Web Site".) Publisher creates common Web pages, such as Home, About, Contact Us, and Services pages, that the user can edit without knowing HTML, script, or other markup languages. The completed Web site can be published easily to an Internet Information Services (IIS) server via a menu option in Publisher.

But once a Web site has been created in Publisher, Publisher may be the only way to maintain the site. For example, a very simple home page with very little customized content generated in Publisher contains 700 lines of complex HTML. Users are unlikely to be able to change such complex sites with Web site tools such as FrontPage; they will most likely need to open the Web site as a saved Publisher document (*.pub), make changes, and then republish the entire site.

Availability and Resources

For more information on Publisher, see www.microsoft.com/office/publisher/.

For more information on what’s new in Publisher 2003, see www.microsoft.com/office/preview/publisher/overview.asp.

For more information on the Office system, see "Office 2003 Lineup Announced" on page 15 of the May 2003 Update.

For more information on how the Office system will be packaged, see "Office 2003 Editions and Channels" on page 16 of the May 2003 Update.