QuarkXPress 8.0 First Look

As much as the 7.0 revision of QuarkXPress was about complex, inter-related publishing workflows, the new version announced today is about a much-needed new look and a host of tools aimed squarely at graphic designers. Quark wasn’t necessarily wrong to focus on the hard-core production market in the last couple of versions, but neither were designers wrong to conclude the XPress interface was looking a little behind the times.

The success the Adobe Internet juggernaut hath wrought is testament that common interface design, predictable tool sets, and cross-application support is just as important as how well an application fits in to the daily demands of a production-heavy environment (where XPress has remained strong). And that publishing production is now a global business challenge needing a single-software solution, not a bunch of market-priced versions to support multi-lingual output.

So in some ways XPress 8 is an admission by Quark that Adobe is now setting the standards for how designers work. XPress 8 is much more “Creative-Suite like” in how it looks and works. But I’m glad to say Quark didn’t just copy a few interface ideas or settle on some standard keyboard shortcuts. By going back and re-focusing on the little stuff, they’ve actually made some giant strides forward.

Updating the user interface in a product like QuarkXPress is a bit risky, as many users have hung on precisely for the reason that they don’t like or want to change. But…

Read the rest of Gene Gable’s first look at QuarkXPress 8.0 at Creativepro.com.