Product Reviews

The big news in the design and production world is QuarkXPress 8. An event like this doesn't happen very often, and what has become increasingly clear is that, one way or another, this release would shape the future of design and publishing. Now that it's finally here, the questions on everyone's lips are whether the new version is worth adopting and is it good enough to keep InDesign from continuing its takeover? We looked at a pre-release beta version of QuarkXPress 8, and we decided that it looked very promising. But as the saying goes, 'there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip'. So does the final release live up to the initial promise?

The first thing you notice about this application is its redesigned interface. As we said in our beta preview, this is a radical departure from all previous versions and gives it a truly modern look. But what's also remarkable about this is how familiar it still manages to feel once you start using it. Shortcuts remain the same, tools are where you expect them (despite the rationalised and simplified tool palette), and even new things such as the image scaling and rotating features are logical and obvious. This is an impressive evolutionary step that balances the familiar with the new. The tools themselves are more intelligent. You can switch from selection to content mode by double-clicking, and adjusting images within boxes is pleasingly simple.

The new design grid feature is, as we observed before, an incredibly useful tool for any experienced designer. Working with grids is a fundamental requirement for most forms of page design. Previous versions of QuarkXPress offered very simple, almost crude grid features. InDesign's, by comparison with those, are good - but QuarkXPress 8 really does take design grid creation and control to a completely new level. These are set using new grid styles and

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are based on font metrics. This will be new to many designers, but it is actually a concept that's been around as long as typesetting itself, and it makes a lot of sense once you start using it. Guides, set manually or by the new Guides palette helps with setting up guides (as opposed to grids), and these can be created en masse, hidden, adjusted and deleted from the palette. Whether you prefer dealing with grids or guides, you have much more power and control.

These are just a couple of the many features that have been improved or added. For example, Item Find/Change is exceptionally powerful, allowing objects to be selected and replaced by others according to a wide range of parameters. Interactive Designer, the Flash content-producing Xtension that was previously available as a separate purchase, is bundled with the core application. This now has true peer-level design abilities - anything you can make in a regular QuarkXPress page can be used in an interactive SWF layout, too. Native Illustrator file import now complements the Photoshop support. It's worth noting here that layers in Photoshop images can be hidden, shown and given custom blending modes individually, which is more than InDesign currently allows.

All this doesn't come for free. The hardware requirements have stepped up a little, and it won't run on particularly old and underpowered Macs. But a Power Mac G4 running Mac OS X 10.4 and fitted with 1GB of Ram is fine, so it remains relatively accessible. You don't need to budget for a Ram-packed Mac Pro when you upgrade, and we found the performance to be good.

It has been a long time coming, but this is a momentous release that changes a great deal. It gives you more control over native Photoshop graphics than InDesign does, it has stunning design grid and typographic features, and it packs quite workable web layout and actually excellent Flash design tools all into the same environment. It doesn't come as part of a suite of applications, but you do get more for your money than you may have expected.

If you're an existing QuarkXPress user, this is what you probably thought would never happen - an upgrade easily good enough to keep you this side of the fence. If you're an InDesign user will all this be enough to tempt you to QuarkXPress? That's a tough call; both applications are very good. But whatever you do, you owe it to yourself to grab a demo and put QuarkXPress 8 through its paces.