Microsoft Corp. has defeated most competitors to its Office suite of software. But a new edition of the popular program will be challenged by free or low-cost Web-based alternatives from Google Inc., which some businesses are adopting.

Microsoft has added Web-friendly features to Office 2010, which will become offered to business starting in May, that allow people to run over the Internet Word, Excel and other applications through Web browsers and to edit documents all together with other users. The company will also offer a free, online version of Office 2010 that has advertising.

The moves are Microsoft’s most firm effort yet to refashion one of its mightiest cash cows for the era of “cloud computing,” a Google-backed trend in which applications are run in remote data centers and often rented to customers rather than purchased and installed on customers’ personal computers.

Google’s online Apps, which execute related tasks to Office, have gathered steam in recent years by reducing costs and administrative hassles. Google also competes with behind-the-scenes software in the Office family for running email systems and company Web sites, called Exchange and SharePoint.

Google began Thursday visibly testing a Blogger layout tool that the company says allows people to adapt the look of their blog.

The templates tool supports professional designs, prebuilt templates and a color control to alter the blog’s palette of colors. Those familiar with CSS and HTML will find the ability to combine stock photos and custom background scenes, too.

There are 15 templates, hundreds of background images from iStockphoto, and custom colors, fonts and blog layouts with one, two or three columns. One new feature lets people change the color palette of the blog with a color slider.

Google has made the Blogger Template Designer available through Blogger in Draft, Blogger’s test lab, also known to developers as a sandbox or test bed. Blogger supports more than 300 million active users and more than 388 million words are published on Blogger every day, according to Google.

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There aren’t any magic pills to create a great Web page that everyone will visit again and again, but if you follow these ten tips your site will be more trendy and easier for people to read.

1. know your audience, and keep them in mind when you write.
If your Web pages are regular by people with slower modems then designing a page that looks best over a T1 is not a successful approach.

2. Keep your pages short.
If you minimize the scrolling, chances are, your readers will get your message. A good screen size is 640 pixels wide by 480 tall.

3. Use tables of contents.
According to Jacob Nielsen only 10% of users will scroll beyond the first screen of text. If that first screen has a table of contents viewers will click on the links to the explanatory text.

4. Keep images small.
Large images annoy people. If it takes too long to download, many people will never see it, as they will have browsed somewhere.

5. Use Web colors.
The browser-safe color palette will ensure that most people will see your page and images in the colors you intended.

6. Avoid lots of text.
People don’t read the Web, they soar it.

7. Check your spelling.
Use a spell checker, either in your editor or on-line.

8. Keep links current.
Check your links often to make sure they are still valid. Using a link checker speeds up pages with many links.

9. Annotate your links.
If a page is good enough to link to, then it’s good enough to explain why you like it.

10. Put contact information on your pages.
The Web is interactive and dynamic, and you should welcome comments on your pages. Also, if there is a broken link or other problem, your readers can let you know, easily.