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Quark Ships QuarkXPress 8

by , 12:20 PM EDT, July 31st, 2008

Quark announced QuarkXPress 8, the newest version of its professional page layout application, on Thursday. Version 8 includes new design tools geared towards improving creative workflows and enhanced typography support for better text control.

QuarkXPress 8 added improved Bezier pen tools for vector-based illustrations, smart Item and Text Content tools that contextually change behavior, a new Measurements palette, a Picture Content tool for modifying image frames and sizes on the fly, and a redesigned interface to help users work faster and more efficiently. The new version also gained the ability to add content to documents via drag-and-drop from any drag-and-drop aware application like iPhoto, Adobe Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Microsoft Word.

The new typography tools give users more precise control over the text in their documents and finally add hanging character support for optical alignment. They include paragraph-by-paragraph text and punctuation alignment control, several alignment presets, and the ability to create custom presets.

The new version includes built in support for Adobe Flash content creation, which previously required the Quark Interactive Designer add-on package. No coding skills are required to create Flash content, and completed layouts can be exported for use in HTML documents as SWF or as self-running Flash applications.

QuarkXPress 8 also improved international support and replaced the customized file formats used in previous versions of the applicatio for a unified file format that allows users to open and edit any QuarkXPress 8 document regardless of the language it was originally created in. Users will, however, still have to purchase the appropriate version of the application based on the languages they plan to use when creating documents.

QuarkXPress 8 is priced at US$799, or $299 for upgrades from any previous version. Users that purchased or upgraded to QuarkXPress 7 between May 29 and August 1, 2008, will be eligible for a free upgrade to QuarkXPress 8.

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:SpyPlane Posts: 3 Joined: 31 Jul 2008
Subject: Ho Hum

Do I hear someone yawning?

Close Name:xmattingly Posts: 266 Joined: 31 Jul 2007
Subject: The story of the week...?

Quote
SpyPlane wrote:
Do I hear someone yawning?
No... but I hear crickets chirping. Quark adds features that InDesign has had for at least a few years?! That's EXCITING news!

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Who?

Didn't they screw over the Mac user 5-8 years ago?

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Karma is a bitch

Quark had it coming. Between how they treated programmers to the Mac community, they were their own worst p.r. people. Indesign is a much better graphics program-good riddance to Quark.

Stick that in your dongle and smoke it!

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

I moved on to InDesign in 2002. My best customer is intrenched in Xpress and intransigent about staying with Quark. They adopted Xpress 6.x to have full Mac OS X compatibility.

Now, in 2008, they decided they would not migrate to InDesign and purchased the Xpress 7 upgrade before August 1 to get Xpress 8 free.

I baught this same upgrade before August 1. I installed it and Xpress 7.31 is an impressive attempt buy Quark to stay competitive.

I think Quark is making headway in keeping some of their hesitent long time customers to continue to invest in Quark Xpress upgrades and stay away from InDesign adoption.

Xpress 7.31 is a mature well patched and updated version of 7. I hope my customer does not migrate to 8 soon, even if they receive shipment of 8. I would want some patches and updates to version 8 before I switch from 7.31.

InDesign CS2 Rocks! I think my local printers who prefer native page layout files over PDF are going to start supporting InDesign CS3 soon.

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