Quark’s press release follows, verbatim:
Quark announced today QuarkXPress 9, the newest version of QuarkXPress, which will allow designers to publish directly to digital devices and increase their productivity with new features for design automation. As the graphic design and page-layout software that puts designers at the center of the creative process, QuarkXPress already helps creative and corporate professionals create design-rich layouts that can be published to print, Web, and interactive Flash (SWF) media. QuarkXPress 9 will now give designers the power to design for and publish to digital devices in a variety of formats, while also offering them even more control over the execution of their creative visions.
Invitation to Launch Event
Today Quark is hosting an online launch event to unveil QuarkXPress 9, review its new capabilities, and introduce early adopters and partners. To view the launch event, please visit: http://godigitalnow.quark.com.
Digital Publishing with QuarkXPress 9
QuarkXPress 9 sets a precedent for digital publishing by offering designers a flexible and cost-effective array of options for creating content that can be published to digital devices — e-readers, smartphones, and tablets — with one tool, and without programming code. Whether a designer needs to publish directly from QuarkXPress to the iPad, create content for an e-book, or reach an expansive audience through the Blio™ eReader, QuarkXPress 9 can help.
App Studio for QuarkXPress: With App Studio for QuarkXPress, designers will have a dedicated design environment within QuarkXPress 9 for creating content for the iPad. Designers will be able to create customized apps for the iPad, distribute their apps through the Apple App Store, and then publish richly designed, interactive content to the app. QuarkXPress 9 provides familiar tools to easily repurpose existing content or to design content specifically for the iPad that includes video/audio players, slideshows, scrollable regions, Web overlays, pop-up windows, buttons, and hyperlinks.*
Design for the Blio eReader: The Blio eReader is a free, multi-platform, multi-device application that presents eBooks just like the printed versions, in full color and with all of the features of the ideal eReader. The Blio eReader can be downloaded free from www.blio.com and is also pre-installed on millions of Windows computers from Toshiba, HP, and Dell, as well as devices that run the iOS, Android, and Silverlight platforms. QuarkXPress 9 is the only page layout software with direct support for the Blio eReader, including the ability to enhance eBooks with interactive elements and a Read Logic feature that separates the print experience from the digital experience.
Export to ePUB: QuarkXPress 9 includes an easy option for exporting to ePUB, the free and open e-book standard developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Designers can create traditional text-based e-books and publish to e-bookstores such as Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble® NOOK®, and Amazon Kindle. Book publishers can also export existing QuarkXPress layouts in ePUB format. QuarkXPress 9 includes a new Reflow View that allows designers to configure the content behind their layout to prepare it for reflow-based outputs such as ePUB. Designers can also automatically create an ePUB table of contents from the Reflow View’s article structure.
Design-driven Automation
In addition to its innovative digital publishing capabilities, QuarkXPress 9 includes new features that help automate the design process. The features are instrumental in increasing productivity and alleviating many manual, time-consuming design tasks.
Conditional Styles: This new feature allows designers to automatically style content based on powerful styling rules
Bullets and Numbering: Compatible with Microsoft Word import and export, the new Bullets and Numbering feature of QuarkXPress 9 makes it even easier to format ordered and unordered lists and complex multi-level outlines
Callouts: With the Callouts feature, boxes and groups move automatically with text as determined by the designer; callouts can be positioned relative to the page, spread, text box, paragraph, or character
ShapeMaker: A wizard for easily creating or modifying hard-to-draw shapes such as waves, polygons, stars, and spirals, ShapeMaker also allows designers to create unique corner effects
ImageGrid: Allows designers to import and automatically build grids of images with a variety of layout options; also supports image captioning
Linkster: Enables designers to unlink and relink text boxes that already contain text, to unlink stories spanning multiple pages, and to link or unlink boxes without disrupting existing text
Story Editor: Provides a word-processor-like view within QuarkXPress, which is most helpful when text within a layout is difficult to read and when reviewing stories that span multiple pages
Cloner: The smartest and most efficient way to clone design elements, Cloner allows designers to copy items or pages to other pages or layouts and can be used to combine layouts or split them apart
Availability and Pricing
QuarkXPress 9 will ship in April 2011 and the price will match the current price of QuarkXPress 8: $799 for a full product license and $299 for upgrades from QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7. It will be available through authorized Quark resellers (http://www.quark.com/Buy/QuarkXPress_Sales/ResellerSearch.aspx) and through the Quark Store (http://shop.quark.com/am/). App Studio for QuarkXPress — which enables publishing to the iPad — will be available as a free update to QuarkXPress 9 users within 90 days after QuarkXPress 9 ships.
Buy QuarkXPress 8, Get QuarkXPress 9
From February 23, 2011 to April 30, 2011, anyone who purchases or upgrades to QuarkXPress 8 at the regular price is eligible to upgrade to QuarkXPress 9 for free. In addition, any customers who purchased QuarkXPress 8 between January 1, 2011 and February 23, 2011 are entitled to a complimentary upgrade to QuarkXPress 9. Those who qualify should complete the QuarkXPress 9 upgrade redemption form located here: http://www.quark.com/buy8get9/. Valid serial numbers and validation codes established between January 1, 2011 and April 30, 2011 will be necessary to redeem the free upgrade to QuarkXPress 9.
For a complete overview of QuarkXPress 9, and to see video demonstrations of many of the new capabilities, please visit: http://www.quark.com/Products/QuarkXPress/.
* App Studio for QuarkXPress will be made available for free to QuarkXPress 9 users within 90 days of the QuarkXPress 9 ship date. For designers interested in iPad publishing now, Quark is offering an iPad Publishing Service for QuarkXPress in which Quark will configure a starter iPad app with a customer’s logos and colors and enable the enrichment of QuarkXPress content, which can then be published to that app. Users of the service will be able to migrate to QuarkXPress 9 for iPad publishing once App Studio for QuarkXPress is released. For more information, please visit: http://www.quark.com/Solutions/Applications/Digital_Publishing_Solutions.aspx.
Source: Quark Inc.
People still use QuarkXPress?
Rarely has there been a company that’s been so hostile to their customers as Quark. The only reason I care about their continued existence is for some semblance of competition with Adobe.
People still use Quark? 1995 called they want their UI back.
Dang macromancer, beat me to it.
I’ve been a Quark user for nearly two decades. Just bought and installed InDesign and boy-howdy is it a LOT better. It doesn’t crash all the time either.
This is a good move for Quark, but it’s something they should have done a long long time ago.
And Macromancer, you are dead on with the customer-hostility comment! I’ve never been treated so poorly by a software company in my life. If I had any other options in earlier years, I would have taken them right away. It’s just that for most of my design work life, Quark has been the standard for printing companies. Now they all want PDF’s and couldn’t care less what you designed the document in, so it doesn’t matter.
“the Macintosh platform is shrinking,” and suggested that anyone dissatisfied with Quark’s Mac commitment should “switch to something else.”
Quark CEO Fred Ebrahimi 2002
f QuirkDepressd.
a “design” app made for beancounters, not artists. I loathe Quirk with the intensity of a hundred million burning suns.
Quark, what?
… ” Apple iBook”? And, just when did Apple ship their last iBook? My mother still has one, but her needs are so limited that she could get by with a PoC netbook!
iBook is an App! The reference was to the App not the computer!
And, Quark’s press release correctly said “e-bookstores such as Apple iBooks,” so this is a reading comprehension issue.
That said, Quark is an abomination of a software company.
Switched to ID in 2005. Got tired of Quark’s. We switched our entire office by upgrading our CSS packages and saved money to boot. Found a great plugin to convert the mountain of files into ID files, haven’t looked back.
Quark can go to hell. Arrogant bunch of losers.
I’d never use a Quark product again.
When will greedy this company fold….
Personally, I think you’re all nuts.
I agree. Adobe service is just as bad and Adobe is just as greedy!
Sadly, that is so. We’re stuck between a two desiccated cow pies. I’ve instead been using Apple Pages lately for less stringent work.
I switched to InDesign at the same time I switched irrevocably to OS X around 2002. Since there wasn’t an OS X version of Quark til…really cares when it happened. Since the days of Quark 5 whenever the splashy headline with each new release is about some web or multimedia feature I could care less about Quark has sunk deeper into the realm of irrelevancy, except as a punchline on forums like this.
I love Quark and have built a great business on it for atleast 2 decades. Also have CS for Illustrator and Photoshop, but HATE InDesign. Quark treats their Mac customers like hell…what about Adobe?
Adobe screwed Freehand. They applied some of the features to Illustrator. Still inferior to Freehand. inDesign still awful in my opinion. And they both outsource their Tech Support to India!
QuarkXpress ran circles around Pukemaker any day. When Adobe bought Pagepuker they realized it was so pathetic, they had to start from scratch and created the reincarnation of the ghost of Pukemaker… InDesign, just as pathetic as it’s ancestor.
absolutely!
Ubermac, if you had read information Adobe released then you would know that ALDUS started InDesign (K2 back then) and Adobe just finished it.
Does anyone give a rat’s about QuarkXPress any more? Let it die.
I share my design work with InDesign 60% and QuarkXPress 40% of the time so I know both applications. ID is comprehensive and has a “kitchen-sink” approach to its UI (like all Adobe software) and I can fiddle with any nuance or setting. Quark 8 has placed its emphasis on simplicity and they chose to get the UI out of the way of the creative process and rely much less on tweaking everything. Depending on my job, either ID or QXP’s approach can be effective and considering the work habits of the designer; much like Illustrator is to FreeHand. And let’s not forget that competition is good and Quark is the only other sizable player in this field with you-know-who.
That said, Quark ruined their lead 10+ years ago by taking their customers for granted and being especially abusive to Mac users. A bad move that cost them dearly and I suspect Quark’s new management knows this and is still eating humble pie as it plays catch-up to InDesign. BUT(!) the Quark lesson is one that any software company must recognize; don’t mistreat your customers or you will find a backlash that lasts for years …like Quark experienced and the comments here testify.
sounds nice if
1 it runs on the mac
2 it’s scriptable
and
3 it’s not too exepnsive
and of course
4 I can buy it with itunes money or cash
We have explored the theme of digital publishing for IPAD and tablets,
we were beta testers from the Adobe solution for digital publishing (Adobe DPS).
In six months we have learned a lot and we decided to share our experience and practice. We have collected all into a project that is not just an app, but a set of tools that we needed to move towards a digital magazine.
We’d love to know what you think and if you think our tools useful.
Here all the information about it:
website: http://www.digital-publishing-guide.com
http://itunes.apple.com/it/app/digital-publishing-guide/id440504179?mt=8