The designers of Home Publishing 2000 have added many new and improved innovative functions to their new 2000 edition. New templates for the creation of banners, calendars, invitations, flyers, newsletters, labels, business cards, stationery and much more. The Text Frame Linking feature makes creating a professional business or personal use project of coordinating documents in any chosen category easy to accomplish.

One of the most desirable of these new templates is the ability to design. envelopes, which was a definite program omission in the previous version. You now have the option to create coordinating greeting card and envelope to complete a finished look to your project.

For any of you who attended our October meeting, where a representative from Microsoft demonstrated the new Office 2000, you may remember two of those programs had many new functions. I am pleased to say one of these, the multiple undo tool, has been added to Home Publishing. After using this undo functions for just a few times I wonder how I ever did without it. Unfortunately the second of these, being able to keep the clip gallery open was not. I feel this would have been an improvement well worth the addition. With the open function you are able to grab and drop, copy and paste and eliminate tiresome scrolling every time you used the clip gallery. In a program such as this, where so much of the creative aspects revolve around the clip gallery its addition would have been a definite plus. With the ever-popular use of the Internet, Home Publishing 2000 has added many new animated email greetings ready to be personalized, again with ease. The clip gallery included makes creating your own email projects almost limitless, with over 100,000 graphics including motion clips, sounds and music. All the email projects you wish to send can be easily done with using your email program.

Also, Home Publishing 2000 does not require the recipient to have this program to receive your greeting.

The full version of Picture It, the photo editing program included in the Home Publishing Suite 2000, is full of standard features such as correcting brightness, contrast, sharpness etcetera. Many other features enable the user the ability to crop, clone, remove red eye and wrinkles plus refinish old photos. The special effects are extremely impressive, adding even more enhancements to projects. You can change, distort, stamp images, choose from dozens of edge effects and so much more. All contributing to the success of the completed project, whether it be a web page, collage, email greeting or photo enlargement.

The Web Wizard walks you through creating a personal web page using any or all of the pre mentioned functions, again giving a professional look to your project. Which when you consider the number of people who could possibly be looking in, is a very impressive function.

In conclusion, I found Home Publishing Suite 2000, designed to encompass many different features into one package, to be a complete creative program to tweak the creative imagination of the home computer enthusiast. Even though this program can be used for very elaborate projects, children can also enjoy using this family friendly software. With just a minimum amount of practice, child or adult will be amazed at what he or she can do with a great deal of confidence and ease.

The Home Publishing Suite 2000 is the top of the line of three programs offered by Microsoft. The other two are Home Publishing 2000 and Greetings 2000. See comparison chart. With the $20 rebate now being offered, the Suite with all its features is a very, very good deal.

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