CorelDraw 9 Graphics Suite consists of CorelDraw for Illustration and Corel's PhotoPaint 9 for image editing, as well as a variety of other graphics tools. A fairly powerful solution for traditional graphics work, the package's Web graphics production leaves a lot to be desired.
At times, Corel's interface is quite intuitive. Select a tool and a property bar above the work area displays the tool's options. You can set the swatch color palette to allow Web-safe colors only. And Options palettes can be set to float or to be docked as tabbed pages. But with two products that aren't well integrated, the interface can be frustrating.
Some of CorelDraw's Web tools are very handy. You can define an object as a URL hot spot easily, and a right mouse click lets you check links. The Link Manager keeps a list of all links and notes whether they are valid or broken.
The package's gradients and drop shadows are versatile, with editable nodes; control over layers and masks is state-of-the-art. Corel Script and Microsoft VBA provide powerful automation.
The suite is packed with clip art and various utilities, including CorelTrace, which ably converts bitmapped images into vector shapes. CorelDraw has powerful typographic controls, producing clean, legible type that remains editable even after being converted to HTML. There is no control, however, over the anti-aliasing color. And we found that some text exported to GIF had stray white pixels along the edges that were noticeable against dark backgrounds.
Creating animations with PhotoPaint is time-consuming and kludgy. The package cannot create JavaScript mouse rollovers, though it does have predefined Internet objects, such as radio buttons and pop-up menus. Another option lets you insert a placeholder for a Java applet.
The two programs have some confusing quirks. The GIF and JPEG exports are accessed differently in CorelDraw and PhotoPaint. CorelDraw's GIF export has minimal options, whereas Photo-Paint's GIF export and 8-bit optimization involve a deep, tabbed dialog with an editable palette, four kinds of dithering, and a batch option (but without download estimates or file size information).
HTML export is powerful but not comprehensive. The suite has no user-controlled image-slicing or image-mapping functions, though it can generate client- or server-side maps and save to an HTML table. A Publish to PDF wizard maintains hyperlinks and bookmarks.
Another wizard steps you through publishing to the Internet, with numerous options along the way. The invaluable Web Preflight checks for and helps correct problems such as overlapping Internet objects and text incompatibilities.
CorelDraw 9 Graphics Suite is a feature-rich environment for creating graphics, but it has not yet embraced the Web. And as easy as it is to navigate through and learn, its more advanced functions can be confusing.