The Web is so much a part of our lives that it's hard to imagine a world without it. Yet most people are daunted by the thought of creating anything more complicated than a YouTube or Facebook page, as the general belief is that you need to be proficient at HTML (or Java, ASP, JSP, etc.) before you could even contemplate designing your own site.

It's for this reason that Avanquest came up with the Web Easy series, to help those without programming or technical skills to produce a good looking and practical Web site that would serve both leisure and commercial interests. Version 7, which is entirely Windows Vista compatible, continues in the same tradition with a number of significantly useful additions.

Once loaded, the uncluttered workspace provides you with a simple menu and toolbar at the top of the page, two taskbars down the left-hand side (for Home tasks such as design, build and publish plus Edit tasks) and a pop-up File Browser at the bottom of the page which can be used to drag and drop photos, clipart, movies and objects onto your page.

When you open the software for the first time you're presented with a handy Activity Centre which acts as a start-up menu to point you towards creating a new Web site using the Assistant, a blank page or templates. Included is an interactive Tutorial to walk you through the basic steps and a link to help you upload the finished product when you're ready.

The number of templates has been increased to over 135 and these are divided into four categories; Business, Family & Personal, Hobbies & Events and Organisations & Clubs. For some reason, the non-business templates show an unusual bias towards photo albums, horoscopes, travel and ecology but little in the way of sports, entertainment and computer games, but as they're only templates, you can always do your own variations.

The interactive Tutorial, on the other hand, will give you much more help in learning how to compose, arrange, edit and enhance your site according to your specific needs. Determined to keep up with modern net developments, Avanquest has now included instructions on how to create and host a Podcast using audio and video files, as well as setting up a Web shop and promoting your products on eBay. The whole e-commerce tools package should be a major draw on its own, enabling you to design and insert shopping carts, e-mail capture and credit card processing.

Sophisticated Web designers can even include an RSS feed for updating news, pick up useful tips on search engine optimization, enjoy improved Flash animation tools and make use of cascading style sheets (CSS) for designs.

If these are your first tentative steps towards designing your own Website, Web Easy 7 makes the process relatively pain-free with its friendly interface, large selection of templates and extensive tutorial, aimed at newbies and moderately experienced designers.