Welcome to the New Quark VS InDesign.com

Welcome to the all new Quark VS InDesign​.com!

In February 2006 we began ask­ing read­ers like you for opin­ions of Quark VS InDesign​.com. We asked you some very impor­tant ques­tions, and we lis­tened close­ly to your answers.

What You Liked: Improved

First, we asked you what you liked about Quark VS InDesign​.com. Everyone answered that series of mul­ti­ple choice and fill-in ques­tions dif­fer­ent­ly, but you also agreed more often than you dis­agreed. You like our how-tos most of all, fol­lowed close­ly by our insight­ful edi­to­r­i­al, time­ly news, and our no holds barred reviews. In short, you liked just about every­thing we pub­lish. But, you want­ed more of it. 

To answer that, you’ll get more of every­thing. More fea­ture arti­cles, more tuto­ri­als, more news, more reviews, and, of course, more editorials.

Although near­ly all read­ers found nav­i­ga­tion and move­ment through the old Quark VS InDesign​.com intu­itive and clear, we felt it could be clear­er and eas­i­er. More impor­tant­ly, we want­ed to make find­ing and access­ing infor­ma­tion eas­i­er. You’re busy pro­fes­sion­als, and, as much as we’d love to just hang out with you all day, we know you usu­al­ly need to get in, get spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion, and get out. We’ve made that as easy as pos­si­ble with sev­er­al major and minor changes in the new Quark VS InDesign​.com.

The largest improve­ment to nav­i­ga­tion and orga­ni­za­tion is the aban­don­ment of the blog style that marked–and handicapped–the old Quark VS InDesign​.com. Previously, every new arti­cle pushed every oth­er arti­cle down and often out of sight. Information you want­ed and need­ed was eas­i­ly missed. Now, our more com­pact, more log­i­cal home page is orga­nized by arti­cle type, as are indi­vid­ual sec­tion and sub­ject pages.

Which brings us to anoth­er major change in con­tent orga­ni­za­tion and access. Every arti­cle is clas­si­fied into a log­i­cal arti­cle type–a fea­ture arti­cle, news and announce­ments, tuto­ri­als and how-to, and reviews. Additionally, every arti­cle is also orga­nized by sub­ject. Want to read only how-tos? Easy: Go to the “How-To” sec­tion of Quark VS InDesign​.com. Want to read every­thing about InCopy (a huge request among sur­vey respon­dents)? Go to the “InCopy” sub­ject; you’ll find all arti­cles deal­ing with that sub­ject, from fea­tures to news, tuto­ri­als to reviews.

Keywords, an improved search engine, focussed RSS feeds, easy to nav­i­gate archives, and improved side­bar palettes make find­ing the arti­cles and infor­ma­tion you want even faster and easier.

What You Didn't Like: Fixed

Next, we asked what you did­n’t like about Quark VS InDesign​.com. We already knew the white text on blue gra­di­ent back­ground was not ide­al. To be per­fect­ly can­did, we planned on get­ting rid of that even before we asked you whether you liked it; we knew the answer. In fact, plan­ning the redesign and refor­mat is what prompt­ed the read­er survey.

We were sur­prised, how­ev­er, when the results of the sur­vey start­ed com­ing in. Some peo­ple absolute­ly hat­ed the site design, oth­ers were ambiva­lent, and a few even liked it. Majority rules, how­ev­er, and the white text on blue gra­di­ent had to go (we’re pret­ty hap­py about that, actu­al­ly). We hope everyone–even those who appre­ci­at­ed the old design–likes the new Quark VS InDesign​.com. It’s still a lit­tle over the top, but that’s the point: Everything about this clash of the desk­top pub­lish­ing titans is a lit­tle bom­bas­tic, a lit­tle over the top. The pre-eminent author­i­ty on that con­flict must fol­low suit–in good fun, of course.

The old Quark VS InDesign​.com was­n’t eas­i­ly print­able, either. Nor, you said, was it easy to for­ward a favorite arti­cle to a co-worker. Both con­cerns have been fixed: Every arti­cle now fea­tures but­tons to eas­i­ly print and e‑mail arti­cles. Click the “Print” but­ton at the top or bot­tom of an arti­cle, and all the back­ground images and col­ors fade away, leav­ing you with clean, print­able arti­cle. E‑mailing an arti­cle to a co-worker, your mom, or your attor­ney is just as easy with the “E‑mail” but­ton in each article.

What You Wanted: You've Got It

In the sur­vey we asked a cou­ple of spe­cif­ic ques­tions about new fea­tures we were con­sid­er­ing cre­at­ing. You got excit­ed about almost all of them.

No one want­ed to see pho­to gal­leries of our staff’s cats–weird–and only one per­son said she’d like to get in on the bet­ting pool about how many 3‑foot long grey hairs I would pluck before the redesign was fin­ished. Sorry, ma’am; we just can’t run a pool with only one play­er. Besides, I lost count: I start­ed count­ing in pica, then I got con­fused about the conversion–was it 72 even or 72.27 or…?

What you did ask–and, in some cas­es, demand–to receive from Quark VS InDesign​.com, you’ve got–or will soon have. You want­ed more InCopy arti­cles. Starting with my exclu­sive inter­view with Adobe’s Chad Siegel about the future of InCopy, you’ve got it. More is on the way. More tuto­ri­als and how-tos (a demand), are also on the way over the next cou­ple of weeks.

You asked us for more tips, tricks, and short tuto­ri­als fea­tur­ing the oth­er tools you use every­day, tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and fonts. Oh, boy did we lis­ten to that demand! Scroll down just a bit and you’ll see in the left col­umn a brand spank­ing new “Tip o’ the Day” palette. Every sin­gle day (week­days) you’ll find a new tip, trick, or short tuto­r­i­al in that palette. Half the time, the “Tip o’ the Day” will cov­er cool tips, tricks, and tech­niques in QuarkXPress or InDesign, the oth­er half of the time will be about the oth­er tools in your belt.

And the “Tip o’ the Day” isn’t all.

From now until the offi­cial Quark VS InDesign​.com anniver­sary, 1 January 2007, we’ll be rolling out sev­er­al incred­i­ble new fea­tures and ser­vices. Without giv­ing away too much, one such resource will be access to a library of tips and tricks that will have you exclaim­ing more than once and for days on end: “Holy ruler guides, Art-Man! That’s cool!”

The Long Road to 2.0

They say, the best things in life are worth wait­ing for. If you’re a QuarkXPress 7 user, you under­stand that adage all too well. InDesign users who suf­fered through the Nineties can relate, too.

We deeply appre­ci­ate our read­ers who tol­er­at­ed the 1.0 ver­sion of Quark VS InDesign​.com, with its white text on blue gra­di­ent, it’s blog style lay­out, and the ancient, mul­letized pho­to of me. Every day since March of this year, when the user inter­face and struc­ture of the new Quark VS InDesign​.com was first designed, mapped, and set, we’ve ago­nized right along side you.

We tried sev­er­al open source (and a cou­ple of pro­pri­etary) con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems (CMS), get­ting pret­ty far into build­ing the site into them, before real­iz­ing that the­ses CMSes just weren’t ready to man­age a pro­fes­sion­al, content-driven Website. They usu­al­ly lacked crit­i­cal fea­tures and func­tions whose absence could only be dis­cov­ered late in assem­bly and development–y’know, pid­dling lit­tle things like ren­der­ing all arti­cles total­ly inac­ces­si­ble to per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and com­ment­ing sys­tems that made real human read­ers jump through three ardu­ous lev­els of captcha and ver­i­fi­ca­tion while open­ing the door wide to auto­mat­ed spam bots.

After sev­er­al false starts (and enough curs­ing that even Paris Hilton’s boyfriends would blush), we wound up build­ing our own pro­fes­sion­al grade CMS lay­er to run atop the core code of WordPress blog soft­ware. If you want some­thing done right, you’ve got to do it your­self. So, we did. 

Welcome to the all new Quark VS InDesign​.com. Thank you for being with us the last three years–and espe­cial­ly to those who were read­ing before Quark VS InDesign​.com was its own site.

Quark VS InDesign​.com has been your Authority on the War of the Desktop Publishing Giants, and, as we move for­ward, you’ll see Quark VS InDesign​.com con­tin­u­ing to car­ry that respon­si­bil­i­ty as well as assum­ing the man­tle of the Authority on the War of the Desktop Publishing Giants. Today, the new Quark VS InDesign​.com is the first step into the future.

While the war con­tin­ues to rage, Quark VS InDesign​.com remains the author­i­ta­tive cor­re­spon­dent, chron­i­cling every sal­vo of each bat­tle, help­ing keep non-combatants off the casu­al­ty list and steer a safe course between the fighting.

Stay close and keep your head down.