Quark XPress 7 review

Far more powerful is the ability to share and synchronise layouts and sections of layouts. Designate existing elements as a "composition zone" and then add this to the Shared Content palette and you can share, say, the same logo and address details between layouts in a stationery project - edit the master, and all instances automatically update. You can even make a shared composition zone layout available to external projects so that the same advert could be reused in multiple projects. Crucially, the link remains live, so that if the original advert is updated all instances of it are too.

This ability to share composition zones within and between projects is useful for all designers, but its full benefit is felt in workgroups. In particular, it means that multiple users can be working on different sections of a publication at the same time, yet the publication as a whole is updated. For QuarkXPress' core target market of high-end users working collectively on complex publications to deadline, that's worth its weight in gold. Throw in a major reduction in the standalone price and a good-value upgrade, and it's clear Quark has not only heard all the criticisms but acted on them. QuarkXPress certainly isn't going down without a fight. It isn't enough to cause a return mass migration, but it's an essential upgrade.

Author: Tom Arah