AsparaGus' Patch

Provides several page templates to easily put together information. This general page is useful as a page with several paragraphs of text.

Each page has 3 Zones and a Layout drop down allows you to select how those zones are arranged on your page from 8 possible layouts. Zones can contain 0 or more Web Parts.

Web Parts consist of a variety of items, from the simplest Text or Image block, to Weather or even more complex things  such as a slideshow (shown lower rightt) or a Map (shown lower left.) Simply drag the Slideshow Web Part to a zone, add pictures from your Image Gallery, and you're done, as the simple example at the right illustrates. The border and drop shadow effect are interesting. Besides adding titles and setting an order, the only other configuration is choosing 5, 10 or 20 second display. The Map is equally easy to use, simply provide an address, then specify map link or driving instructions or both.

The tool is Front Page (or an online clone thereof) with a nice enough rich text editor.

• Some features like highlighting may be new for those used to MSN Groups.
• The Table tool here is more limited, but it allows an easier choice of a background image from your images. There is a different Web Part called Table which has pre-built shaded tables (you saw one on the Comparison page.)
• Lists, indenting (or blockquotes,) and inserting an image are much the same.
• Images can be right clicked and offer a choice to "Float right" or Float left" allowing text to run around the image.
• A line for a Horizontal Rule is simple enough to intuit.
• The text or items may be positioned using the alignment tool - right, left or centered. Buttons for bold, italic and underline and the same.
• Font style is limited to five named choices, and seven sizes. Common HTML usage like Headings are not found.

The way to the actual HTML is something I haven't yet found, if it exists at all.