A long time ago in a galaxy far away, if you wanted to draw vector art in Windows, CorelDraw! was the only option. Everything else was Mac oriented.
   That did not prevent Corel Corp. from making and constantly improving on what easily became the premier drawing-type program for the Wintel platform. Corel added Corel Photo-Paint to the lineup, along with a host of utilities, and kept getting better and better as the years rolled along.
   In this galaxy right here, today, there are a whole host of drawing programs available for the Wintel environment – perhaps more than the Mac. The PC versions come out first these days, get updated more regularly and the competition is keen in the extreme. With that, its a pleasure to see CorelDraw! 9 out in beta with even more innovations and ease-of-use features than ever.
   Is it the best? Its a neck-and-neck race between CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. We happen to think that some of the newest innovations are super, and that is what we'll talk about here.
   We can do that because no one who has the least interest in draw-type programs on the PC needs an introduction to CorelDraw! Its been a leader for so long that its earned its rightful place at the top of the heap.
   In fact, the list of new features runs to pages and pages, and that does not even count the new version of Corel Photo-Paint. Interestingly, many of the innovations in Photo-Paint are available within CorelDraw! We're going to deal with CorelDraw! here, except to say the crafts filters in Photo-Paint are the nearest things we've seen to a complete solution to effects filters (without having to buy third party filters) we have ever seen. Interestingly, these are also available within CorelDraw! itself.
   Lets talk about . . .
   Draw's new text on a path tool. The truth is that text on a path has been one of the main reasons we have always relied on CorelDraw! As ease-of-use in other applications got to be better and better, text on a path seemed to be more difficult to use, but it always provided the most options we could find.
   Now its easy. Just click on the path and start typing. Don't like the way it looks, just move the text along the path. You can also move the text inside or outside the object. This makes it behave more like placing text in a frame, excedt it is going on a path. Note, too, in the illustration that the selection is the text itself, not the text and the object. Makes it much easier to manipulate.
   If that isn't cool, take a look at the interactive contour tool. You can now create contoured objects and determine the coutour type – such as from the outside, inside or middle. What you do is click on an object with the contour tool selected and merely drag your mouse in whatever direction you wish. An interactive vector line is created (as you can see on the right) which you then can use to manipulate the object. See the little yellow box on the right end of the vector line? You just draf a color into that box and the fill of the contour changes to match. This is way cool.
   The interactive drop shadow works in much the same way. Because of the vector line, you can now create perspective drop shadows as well as standard ones. It gives you some truly awesome power for drop shadows.
   The ability to draw with different strokes has been greatly enhanced, and the types of strokes available right in the box is much, much larger. In addition, you can create your own strokes (like the arrow at the bottom of the screen shot at the left). Yes, its really nice to have a good graphics tablet, but the need to buy one is reduced quite a bit with CorelDraw! strokes.
   There are a gazillion things to like about this release. For instance, the eyedropped now copies an object's color, fill or outline, rather than just color; you can get feedback from your cursor when you go to join or add line segments; there are a raft of new internet features; some outstanding things to add to preparing your documents for printing such as a service bureau wizard; and excellent compatibility enhancements, such as the ability to link externally raster (bitmap) images from Photo-Paint or Adobe Photoshop.
   In the interface department, Corel has greatly enhanced its docker windows so that you have easier access to more geral function areas. You can hide all of them out of the way if you prefer, or have many of them available. Best of all, this is all done with just a click of the mouse here and there.
   It would be unfair were we not to mention the package is, as always, loaded with such worker apps as CorelTrace, CorelTexture, CorelCapture, Corel Script and several new things. It comes with 25,000 clipart images (10,000 of them new) and 1,000 fonts and 1,000 high-res photos. In fact, be careful when installing CorelDraw! You'll want to be sure you don't accidentally dump 1,000 fonts onto your system.
   As usual, CorelDraw! is an outstanding piece of software and an outstanding value as well.
   This review originally was based on the beta version of CorelDraw! 9. Our "rules" on beta reviews is that we do not mention any bugs which might show up in the product because, after all, the software is in a testing stage. Now that the shipping version is available, we can report this to be one of the most stable versions of CorelDraw! we have seen.
   Additionally, even if you are not new to CorelDraw!, you will have everything right at your fingertips. The 830-page manual ships in the box and, in addition, is available on disk as an Adobe PDF file, along with the manuals for PhotoPaint and several other components of this excellent suite.

   Link to Corel's Web site.