Serif products

Serif have a range of software products, which are listed below.

Serif PagePlus

Serif PagePlus is a desktop publishing (page layout) program developed by Serif. The first version was released in 1991 as the first commercial sub-£100 DTP package for Microsoft Windows. Serif's latest releases all support Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

PagePlus is primarily written in C++ using Visual Studio 2008, with a heavy dependence on the Microsoft MFC framework. The Windows GDI library was discarded early in development in favour of an in-house composition engine - supporting advanced bitmap and typeface operations. Said engine currently performs well in comparison to other GDI based products.

PagePlus is generally targeted at the "entry level" DTP user, much of the functionality present in market leading applications from companies such as Adobe Systems is present in PagePlus, such as working in the CMYK colour space. PagePlus also has the ability to view, create, edit and publish PDF files. However Serif has failed to achieve much acceptance within professional circles, partly due to the notable absence of Macintosh versions of its products.

Serif PhotoPlus

Serif PhotoPlus is an image editing program for Microsoft Windows. The latest version is Serif PhotoPlus X8.

Supported platforms

PhotoPlus was developed for Microsoft Windows and supports Windows XP, Windows Vista (32/64bit), Windows 7 (32/64bit) and Windows 8 (32/64bit).

History

See also

References

External links

QuickStart

QuickStart is a loading method used by several different software applications, designed to speed up the loading time of their software. Some load the core files and libraries during computer startup and allows the applications to start more quickly when selected later. QuickStarters typically place an icon in the System Tray. When the full application needs to be loaded, the base components are already in RAM, which significantly reduces load time.

QuickStarters are controversial because they use up RAM even when the application is not open. For this reason, QuickStarters can actually decrease performance as a whole. For example, if six applications load a QuickStarter into the System Tray at 50 megabytes per piece, that is 300 megabytes of RAM that could otherwise be used for working applications. If the user only has 256 megabytes of RAM, this will cause running applications to page to virtual memory and drastically reduce performance. On the other hand, if the user has one gigabyte of RAM, running applications will probably not be paged, and load times for QuickStart applications will be reduced (resulting in higher overall performance). The point from where the user powers on the system and when the system is ready for use will be delayed, as the system must incur a performance penalty in the form of reading the QuickStart applications from the hard drive and additional CPU processing and sub-system usage as the QuickStart application is loaded into memory.