Quark Does Flash!

A few weeks ago we told you Quark was set to announce a brand new prod­uct. We also pre­dict­ed what that new prod­uct might be–a Flash edi­tor uti­liz­ing the famil­iar QuarkXPress environment.

Today Quark released Quark Interactive Designer (QID), an add-on mod­ule for QuarkXPress 7. With QID, design­ers may design media-rich Adobe Flash doc­u­ments, includ­ing ani­ma­tion, sound, and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, all while work­ing in the same famil­iar QuarkXPress 7 envi­ron­ment, with the same tools and palettes. Similar to cre­at­ing Web and print lay­outs in cur­rent XPress project doc­u­ments, QID adds a Flash lay­out. Documents may be out­put to print, Web, and SWF for­mats all at once.

Originally cre­at­ed by FutureSplash, Corp., the Flash (for­mer­ly Splash) Web-based vec­tor art and ani­ma­tion for­mat has thrived since its ini­tial debut in 1996. Snatched up by Macromedia to replace its design­er unfriend­ly and com­mer­cial­ly shaky Director mul­ti­me­dia sys­tem, Flash under­went con­stant evo­lu­tion and change in the last ten years. Now, Flash SWF files are not just for Website dec­o­ra­tion. Nearly every class of con­sumer dis­play device now handles–or is based upon–Flash. From the Web, Flash jumped to PDAs, media cen­ter PCs, Point of Sale Systems, kiosks, dig­i­tal sig­nage, and cel­lu­lar phones. In the lat­ter espe­cial­ly Flash’s small file size and crisp vector-based art­work and text com­bine with ani­ma­tion to deliv­er adver­tis­ing and user interfaces. 

During all this evo­lu­tion, Macromedia added fla­vored JavaScript (known at var­i­ous times as ActionScript and FlashScript), retained a frame-based instead of time-based ani­ma­tion track­ing sys­tem, lim­it­ed Flash’s sup­port for com­pli­men­ta­ry appli­ca­tions from com­pet­ing com­pa­nies (most notably Adobe’s Illustrator), and gen­er­al­ly repeat­ed the same mis­takes with Flash they had made with Director. Flash became so fea­ture rich and pow­er­ful, with a user inter­face built to be friend­ly to pro­gram­mers rather than cre­atives, that graph­ic design­ers found it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to learn and work with Flash despite its grow­ing impor­tance even for tra­di­tion­al­ly print based studios.

Quark Interactive Designer is not being billed as a replace­ment for the Flash appli­ca­tion, which was bought by Adobe in 2005 as part of a whole­sale acqui­si­tion of Macromedia. It won’t build SWF forms or ful­ly inter­ac­tive, database-driven kiosks. Wisely, Quark is leav­ing those jobs to Flash and to pro­gram­mers. Instead, QID adds to XPress only the tools typ­i­cal­ly required by cre­ative and pro­duc­tion design­ers in emerg­ing cross-media workflows.

Features of Quark Interactive Designer

According to the doc­u­men­ta­tion, QID offers the fol­low­ing features:

  • Design for Flash out­put intuitively
    Export projects in SWF (Flash) file for­mat. You can design for Flash out­put intu­itive­ly and pre­cise­ly with­out writ­ing a sin­gle line of code or being tied to timelines.
  • Design simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for mul­ti­ple channels
    Create print, Web, and inter­ac­tive lay­outs with­in the same project. The same design­er in the same project can cre­ate the fly­er, the Web site, and the Flash ad.
  • Interact with lay­outs easily
    Bring lay­outs to life with­out hav­ing to mas­ter time­lines, ActionScript func­tions, or oth­er com­plex features.
  • Work with­in QuarkXPress 7
    Use the famil­iar design and lay­out tools in QuarkXPress 7 for print, includ­ing trans­paren­cy, Composition Zones, and in-the-layout image editing.
  • Choose a pre­de­fined action
    Assign pre­de­fined actions to objects. You can choose from a list of over 100 pre­de­fined actions, such as page tran­si­tions, but­ton clicks, and fea­tures for play­ing media files and build­ing menus. You are not required to pro­gram for every action.
  • Dedicate fea­tures for but­tons, ani­ma­tions, and embed­ded movies
    Place but­tons, ani­ma­tions, and embed­ded movies inside a QuarkXPress project. You can make sure your inter­ac­tive ele­ments with­in the final cre­ation match the orig­i­nal concept.
  • Collaborate on projects
    Enable col­lab­o­ra­tion on projects by employ­ing the Composition Zones fea­ture in QuarkXPress 7. Quark Interactive Designer is the only Flash-creation appli­ca­tion with built-in col­lab­o­ra­tion features.
  • Construct inter­ac­tive buttons
    Create but­tons with built-in design behav­iors. For exam­ple, the built-in fea­tures define how a but­ton dis­plays when you click it down. With Quark Interactive Designer, it’s easy to cre­ate self-contained but­tons you can share. These but­tons work sim­i­lar­ly to library items, but they stay editable.
  • Integrate HTML with SWF
    Design and inte­grate Flash and HTML con­tent in an Interactive lay­out using the Composition Zones tech­nol­o­gy inside a Web page (HTML). You can use the syn­chro­nized con­tent with­out first export­ing it as a SWF file and then re-importing. One or more Quark Interactive Designer users can design the HTML page and its embed­ded SWF file in the same appli­ca­tion using the Quark Composition Zones tech­nol­o­gy. At export, the com­plete page is ready to post with a sin­gle click.
  • Support script­ing and expressions
    Provide sim­ple, palette-based script­ing and expres­sions sup­port. You can rapid­ly build inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and more sophis­ti­cat­ed expressions.
  • Support media files
    Embed or link out of QuickTime movies, audio files, and Flash video (FLV) files. Quark Interactive Designer can call files in response to user input or the out­come of rules built into the layout.
  • Animate objects with ease
    Enable design­ers to ani­mate an object sim­ply by draw­ing a path on screen or incor­po­rat­ing a pre­de­fined ani­ma­tion. Quark Interactive Designer includes Animation objects that allow you to build reusable ani­ma­tions with frame-by-frame con­trol. You can also draw a path on the screen to ani­mate an object.
  • Leverage true interactivity
    Build inter­ac­tive but­tons and menus enabled through key­board com­mands, and user input. This true inter­ac­tiv­i­ty allows you to con­trol inter­ac­tive designs.
  • Ensure porta­bil­i­ty
    Export files as SWF Flash files or stand­alone Projector appli­ca­tions for Mac OS or Windows. Multiple export for­mats for cross-platform pro­duc­tion ensure that the export­ed files are view­able by the intend­ed audience.

Availability and System Requirements

As of today, Quark Interactive Designer is avail­able for pur­chase at an intro­duc­to­ry price of $99 USD. After April 1, 2007 Quark will sell the prod­uct for $199. Shrewdly, Quark is giv­ing QID away free to qual­i­fied edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, teach­ers, and students.

A time-limited eval­u­a­tion ver­sion may be down­loaded from Quark’s Website. QID runs on both Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel-based) and Windows, and requires a valid instal­la­tion of QuarkXPress 7.02, which is a free update to reg­is­tered users of XPress 7.

8 thoughts on “Quark Does Flash!”

  1. M Jenius

    Um.… this is the new prod­uct Quark has been hyp­ing up, and here it is. I’m sur­prised at the lack of feed­back. What does the Quark users have to say? I want to know what oth­ers think. As far I’m con­cerned I already use Flash, and I don’t see the point in using anoth­er soft­ware to cre­ate watered-down con­tents. But I’d like to know pos­si­ble user’s views.

  3. Samuel John Klein

    Well, mar­ket­ings one thing though. True user feed­back is another.

    I haven’t had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to try QID yet, but as a long time paid user of both XPress and the Adobe CS, I’ve got to say that Quark has what may be a valid sur­vival strat­e­gy here.

    One of the biggest draw­backs to Quark as it is is that if you want to design for the web and pro­duce and edit draw­ings and graph­ics, you have to use anoth­er appli­ca­tion. I always thought that Adobe was genius in mak­ing thi­er flag­ships look and feel the same and tying them togeth­er with Bridge, mak­ing them a uni­fied environment. 

    I think if Quark wants to remain com­pet­i­tive it must try to make it, in some way, a devel­op­ment envi­ron­ment that allows its users to do what they want to do with­out feel­ing as though they are leav­ing the com­fort of Quark. With the QuarkVista in V6.5 and PSD Import, they’re giv­ing us thi­er take on the design environment. 

    Will QID play with users? We’ll know as soon as we can fig­ure out how many peo­ple would rather use a Quark appli­ca­tion to do Flash. It just might work, in as much as Quark seems to be tak­ing a “giv­ing you just want you’re want­i­ng to have with­out going the whole hog” approach that they did with PSD Import. 

    My per­son­al opin­ion though is that we’ll have to wait and see if this attempt to “steal Flash from under Adobe’s nose” is successful.

  4. M Jenius

    Thanks for the reply guys. I guess we’ll have to see what peo­ple have to say after they try it out. Call me the skep­tic but I seri­ous­ly doubt Flash users will con­vert. Many of the web only design­ers I know doen­s’t even like InDesign. I can’t imag­ine them cre­at­ing flash through Quark.

    I can see it becom­ing pop­u­lar with in-house depar­ments that are already using Quark. Since the addi­tion­al cost is low com­pared to pur­chas­ing Flash. Sounds to me that it’s geared more tor­wards presentation-like flash rather than full-on ani­ma­tion. There are already many third par­ty soft­ware that enables you to cre­ate Flash with­out learn­ing Flash, and they are cheap too.

    Still, I give Quark two thumbs up. They are a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny now. No longer resis­tant to advance­ment and the users.

  5. Martin

    Jenius,

    when read­ing the press release and the reviews, then I think Quark does­n’t want Flash users to switch. It wants to attract the peo­ple who gave up on Flash, as they find it too dif­fi­cult or need design features.

    MacWorld gave Quark-ID 4 out of 5 stars and MacUser also 4 out of 5 mice. Here in Germany PAGE loved it too.

    Maybe worth try­ing, I just haven’t got­ten the nerve yet to down­load 400 MB.

    Greetings
    Martin

  6. Samuel John Klein

    I’d hes­i­tate to say that Quark has got a chance to say it’ll be king of the hill again but I think it sure has saved its own bacon, at least in the near term.

    I’ll go out on a limb here and say that I think Quark’s com­ing around to the Suite way of think­ing. Like I said ear­li­er: it’s start­ing to give us its take on what I call the “Designer Envrionment”, giv­ing the Quark user all the tools they will need to design and pro­duce from with­in XPress with­out hav­ing to fire up some oth­er com­pa­ny’s prod­uct. I under­stand that the QID inter­face has a famil­iar expe­ri­ence with QXP. 

    I’d fur­ther go out on a limb here and say that Quark is tak­ing more than one page out of the Adobe book in that regard; the new palette arrange­ment reminds me of the way InDesign treats its palettes, and now you can get all your QXP func­tion­al­i­ty through palettes if you want–just like InDesign. 

    I don’t see that as a lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty on Quark’s part; their imple­men­ta­tion is hard­ly a carbon-copy of the Adobe envi­ron­ment. But it does seem to be a riff off it. I think this is just Quark being smart.

  7. Shellie Hal

    Just want­ed to cor­rect a state­ment about Quark Interactive Designer. Quark Interactive Designer is avail­able as a free-download – it is not time or fea­ture lim­it­ed as stat­ed on this site. It is ful­ly func­tion­al, no time lim­it. However, this ver­sion of Quark Interactive Designer has a “water­mark” that appears in the SWF file that states “Created with Quark Interactive Designer”.

Comments are closed.