Today Quark announced that QuarkXPress 8, the next major release of their page-layout and design software, is now available to purchase directly from Quark and through Quark Authorized Resellers worldwide.
QuarkXPress 8 delivers superior design power through a new, intuitive interface developed purposefully for the creation of high-end page layout and includes new features such as built-in print, Web and Flash authoring tools, advanced typography control, and global publishing capabilities. QuarkXPress 8 also offers users an enhanced design experience so they can work faster and smarter by quickly and easily accessing the tools they need. The new, intuitive interface delivers updates that allow for more design with fewer clicks. For example:
• Flash and Web Authoring Tools: Without any programming skills, designers and creative professionals can share print content on the Web and in Flash format without purchasing multiple applications or learning code.
• Picture Content Tool: Allows users to grab, rotate, and scale images in real-time without typing in numbers or switching from tool to tool.
• Item Tool and Text Content Tool: Smart behavior within these tools allows for less switching between tools, even for rotation and managing multiple items.
• New Bézier Pen Tools: Draw illustrations directly in QuarkXPress 8 with the redefined Bézier Pen tool.
• Workspace Enhancements: Include new buttons for instant access to master pages and exporting to PDF, EPS, SWF, and HTML— plus new split-view buttons, enhanced contextual menus, and customizable active pasteboards.
• Measurements Palette: Further enhanced to make even more functions easily accessible, including new clickable controls for on-the-fly drop-shadow modification.
• Drag-and-Drop: Drag text and pictures from the desktop, Adobe Bridge, Apple iPhoto, or any other application that supports drag and drop. Alternatively, drag content from QuarkXPress to Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft Word, and other applications for direct editing.
“We are excited to announce the broad availability of QuarkXPress 8. This new version of our flagship product raises the bar once again for page-layout and design,” said Terry Welty, Senior Vice President of corporate marketing for Quark, in the press release. “QuarkXPress 8 offers users advanced features and functionality and increased productivity while maintaining familiarity for long-time users. I encourage everyone to try QuarkXPress 8 with our 60-day Test Drive version, or visit us at one of our Xperience Design Global Tour stops.”
In addition to being available for purchase, Quark is also now offering a free, fully functional, 60-day Test Drive version to users who are interested in experiencing QuarkXPress’ new user interface, improved typographical control, built-in Flash functionality and much more. Download link for the 60-day Test Drive can be found here.
The Xperience Design Global Tour is now underway and, in total, will span 30 countries and 58 cities across the globe. The upcoming portion of the tour to hit the United States includes Dallas and Milwaukee (Pewaukee). The international tour will visit various cities in the following countries: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Chile, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. More info here.
QuarkXPress 8 is now available for purchase directly from Quark and through Quark Authorized Resellers. An upgrade to QuarkXPress 8 from any previous version is US$299 and full product can be purchased for $799. To purchase, visit the Quark Store at www.quark.com/sales/estore.html or find your nearest authorized Quark reseller at www.quark.com/sales/desktop/resellers.cfm.
Does anyone still use Quark…anyone? anyone?
Quark Quark?
I have to. We have thousands of files spanning over 10 years. It’s just too much of a hassle trying to switch now…
Who the hell cares?
Quark is still the preferred software by Art/Ad Houses and Print Bureaus.
Any typograph would be able to switch From Quark to InDesign to Quark to InDesign, etc whenever he feels he grasps the best tool of the moment… And please check how the prices have lowered these last 5 years!
Yet as Rob says: it’s yet a little assle to jump from one PAO to another within the same day!…
@Eric24601
I think you need to check the year.. its 2008 and indesign is around. I work at a printing company and no one likes using quark with all the issues we get. Everyone else we talk to cant stand Quark. It had a good run for a while then adobe came out with indesign and pretty much ended the need for Quark
I still have to use Quark for our old files and for a few clients who just don’t want to switch. Anything that I start new is in InDesign.
I’ve been in this industry for over 10 years. Except in spots here and there, that is not really true. Very few companies use Quark anymore. Obviously my experience isn’t all-encompassing, and I’m sure there are pockets of holdouts here and there, but my experience is quite far, wide, and varied, and believe me, Quark has been quickly dying for years and continues to do so. They have a very very long way to catch up, if they even can at this point.
Oh, I should have said in the print industry, not “this” industry!
Quark sat on their heels, and now it’s costing them.
@Eric24601
Ad Agency-Design House here – no Quark. All our print suppliers use InDesign, all of the other agencies (I am familiar with) here in town use CS3. Some, like us, keep a copy of Quark on hand in case something comes in (we also publish two magazines) and we have to deal with it. My company is all CS3. VERY happy not to have to use Quark. It’s pretty hard to make a comeback from abysmal customer service and crash-prone non-intuitive software. We will NOT be making the switch.
@Eric24601, been in the business 12 years, the last 6 have been using InDesign exclusively, worked for major clients, no one uses Quark. It sucks.
Quark 8 will be exactly the same as Quark 4 – buggy as hell, and slow to use.
Move with the times, it’s 2008 and InDesign is where it’s at.
R.I.P. Quark
So far in international co-edition book publishing, it’s QX mostly, and I have to say that QX7 is quick and reliable.
It exports nicely to pdf for printers to work with, so no probs in any important area.
QX8? Dunno yet. Will have to earn its keep, which for me would be an export mode to eBook format with mov and audio clips on the page.
Being doing design/publishing for about 20 years.
One of the first magazines in the country to go direct to plate (it was a big deal at one time)
Quark reached it’s peak at 4.14.
I resisted switch, but now I have only had to launch quark maybe three times a year.
I use to hate InDesign, but now love it.
Quark? Isn’t that a quantum particle?
@Eric24601
“Quark has been quickly dying for years and continues to do so.”
That’s a mouth full!
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Smart people don’t use Quark anymore. It was just too buggy and the company was way to arrogant.
Then again, there’s lots and lots of not so smart people with entire publishing structures built on top of Quark that make it still the number 1 desktop publish application out there.
I know tech guys who’s entire career and narrow but terribly deep area of expertise is dealing with corrupted Quark documents.
Hmmm… 60 day free trial. Freaking brilliant. Just long enough for you to get locked in.
@Eric24601
“Quark is still the preferred software by Art/Ad Houses and Print Bureaus.”
Nope, not here. We use what our customers bring us, and mostly we see InDesign/CS3. We hardly ever see any QXP any more, it’s been that way for three years.
Quark totally dropped the ball when they took so long to go OS X native with Quark 5. InDesign stepped into the void and hasn’t looked back.
Quark 8 got a disinterested round of raspberries from our prepress techs. They’re hoping none of our customers upgrade so we don’t have to either.
@Eric24601
Hey Eric! You’re famous!
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Going on 25 years in ad/design. Been through them ALL from the beginning. It’s been year’s since Quark ruled the roost, and during it’s reign it went from an improvement over PageMaker to simply the app that everyone used because everyone else used it. Complacency, greed and zero customer-relations killed Quark long before InDesign came around. It was just that we fleas had no warm body to jump to before Adobe came to the rescue. Even v1 of InDesign, with all its flaws, was a welcome alternative to a Quark-weary industry.
Those few people that use Quark these days do so primarily because of legacy files. We bit that bullet long ago be converting all our Quark files to InDesign.
You gotta keep in mind that the readership here is not like the big old broad world out there. It is good to see so many people here have jumped off the Quark Titanic and over to InDesign though. I wish I could convince clients this is the way to go. Hopefully more people will comment here and I can use that as leverage.
RE:”Quark is still the preferred software by Art/Ad Houses and Print Bureaus.”
Not preferred, but needed when somebody sends in the occasional Quark 5/6 file. We open Quark 4.x files in INDD and have virtually any issues. hardly anyone is using 7, so it isn’t an issue.
Has anyone seen any real numbers that show much market share Adobe InDesign has?
EDIT: should read “We open Quark 4.x files in INDD and have virtually NO issues.”