QuarkXPress 7: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Before you plunge in, you should know that there are a few things miss­ing from this review. Beta soft­ware, by def­i­n­i­tion, is not ready for release. Before it is released, bugs are fixed, fea­tures are added, and, some­times, fea­tures are removed. Reviews of pre-shipping prod­ucts are a bad idea in gen­er­al because read­ers tend to make pur­chas­ing deci­sions based on reviews, and if ship­ping prod­ucts dif­fer from the reviewed beta, it can cost some­one mon­ey. Consequently, Quark VS InDesign​.com has a pol­i­cy of review­ing only full ship­ping, retail soft­ware. That means no pre-release or beta ver­sions and no tri­al software–even if it’s sup­pos­ed­ly fea­ture com­plete. If we’re going to give you an opin­ion you might fac­tor into your buy­ing deci­sion, then we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to only eval­u­ate and opine about the exact prod­uct you might buy, as you would buy it.

So, if the pol­i­cy against beta reviews is such a hard line rule, why are you now read­ing a review of the QuarkXPress 7 pub­lic beta? Because, beta though it may be, QuarkXPress 7 is impor­tant. Whether to use XPress or InDesign is a cru­cial ques­tion for pub­lish­ing and design work­flows all around the world. It’s a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion for bil­lion dol­lar pub­lish­ing empires, and, in many ways more impor­tant­ly, it’s a sink or swim ques­tion for the small­est cre­ative stu­dio. In lean times and high­ly com­pet­i­tive cre­ative indus­tries, rev­o­lu­tions have to be antic­i­pat­ed and tak­en advan­tage of the moment they begin to build momen­tum. And, if a cru­cial tech­nol­o­gy is on the decline, as XPress has been the last four years, sig­nals of its demise are even more impor­tant to those whose liveli­hoods depend in some way on that tech­nol­o­gy. XPress 7, even in beta, is impor­tant to our read­ers because, if it’s the wave of the future, they need to be rid­ing on top of it. And, if it’s a falling stone, they need to know to get out from under it.

XPress 7 is impor­tant, and that’s why I reviewed it in beta. Because it’s in beta, you must remem­ber that every­thing below–the good, the bad, and the ugly–is sub­ject to change before the prod­uct ships. And, because the prod­uct is beta, there are a few things miss­ing from this review.

First, there is noth­ing about native Photoshop PSD doc­u­ment import and effects, although this rep­re­sents some of XPress 7’s most talked about sell­ing points. I didn’t write about them, because they aren’t there; the cur­rent pub­lic beta of XPress 7 does not con­tain a PSD import fil­ter. When the beta was released in January 2006, Quark acknowl­edged that PSD import was absent from the pro­gram, which is why it–and any fea­tures pred­i­cat­ed on it–is absent from this review. You won’t find a review of Quark’s Web fea­tures either. This was a deci­sion I made because of the lack of PSD sup­port; I want to cov­er a com­plete Web cre­ation work­flow, and PSDs are typ­i­cal­ly part of that work­flow. You also won’t find per­for­mance sta­tis­tics here. Except in two key instances, I don’t men­tion how long it took XPress to per­form dif­fer­ent tasks or well it per­formed on the com­put­ers with 1GB of RAM ver­sus those with 2GBs. While I did mea­sure XPress’s speed under var­i­ous con­di­tions, that data is effec­tive­ly irrel­e­vant. More so than any­thing else, per­for­mance and response speed change through­out the beta cycle. It would be a dis­ser­vice to you, the read­er, if some sta­tis­tic I men­tioned about the beta’s per­for­mance influ­enced your deci­sion to pur­chase a ship­ping ver­sion that per­formed differently..

For thir­ty days I put the XPress 7 pub­lic beta through its paces, build­ing or recre­at­ing real world projects rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what most peo­ple expect to do with a desk­top pub­lish­ing program–and a few things they shouldn’t expect but will do any­way. Except as above, I tried to cov­er in depth every new and updat­ed fea­ture of XPress 7. Consequently, this is a very long article–even for me. I’ve orga­nized it with mul­ti­ple head­ings to help you read what inter­ests you while eas­i­ly jump­ing over what doesn’t. If you’re uncon­cerned with the details, you’ll find my con­clu­sions and buy­ing advice on the last page.

Let’s start with first impres­sions, then we’ll get into the nitty-gritty of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the QuarkXPress 7 pub­lic beta.

That New Quark Smell

Upon ini­tial launch, the tru­ly astute will note the new Composition Zones Tool on the tool­box. Other than that new 16x16 par­cel of pix­els, XPress 7 looks exact­ly like XPress 6.5. Looks are deceiving.

The XPress user inter­face has always been a double-edge sword for Quark. It has­n’t changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since ver­sion 3 in the ear­ly Nineties, lead­ing many users to describe it as “tired,” “out of date,” and even “decrepit.” Regardless of the new fea­tures added with each release, the sta­t­ic user inter­face is as much respon­si­ble for con­sumers’ belief that Quark does­n’t inno­vate as the aver­age half decades between full ver­sion releas­es. On the oth­er hand, the lack of major changes in the user inter­face and most often used fea­tures equate to instant proficiency–if you were pro­duc­tive in QuarkXPress 3, 4, 5, or 6, you can start cold with XPress 7 and be just as productive.

Quark is once again bet­ting on famil­iar­i­ty to grease the upgrade path. While that deci­sion will ease the tran­si­tion for those who find them­selves forced to upgrade, retain­ing the 15-year-old user inter­face will undoubt­ed­ly cost Quark mar­ket share among those who equate inter­face changes to fea­ture innovation.

If your test­ing of the XPress 7 beta stops at open­ing the appli­ca­tion and cre­at­ing a new blank doc­u­ment, then all you will see is the same old XPress. Don’t stop there.

Start work­ing with XPress 7–create a box or line–and you’ll get your first whiff of that musky-sweet new Quark smell.

The Good

The Measurements Palette
As ever more func­tions and options are incor­po­rat­ed into appli­ca­tions, soft­ware mak­ers are increas­ing­ly chal­lenged with find­ing places to hold the nec­es­sary con­trols. No one will argue that, as valu­able and con­ve­nient as palette-accessible options are, palettes are quick­ly becom­ing too numer­ous and unweild­ly in the aver­age application.

The XPress solu­tion to con­trol clut­ter has his­tor­i­cal­ly been vari­able content–or con­text sensitive–dialog box­es like Modify, whose selec­tion of tabs holds sev­er­al times the num­ber of con­trols in the same space through the use of tabbed panes. The selec­tion of tabs in the Modify dia­log changes accord­ing to the cur­rent­ly active tool and select­ed object or objects. Dialog box­es, how­ev­er, have an inher­ent lim­i­ta­tion: When they’re open, you can’t access the lay­out or select objects. The ver­sa­til­i­ty of palettes is that they are always onscreen, enabling simul­ta­ne­ous access to con­trols and objects. Of course, that leads to palette bloat.

Context sen­si­tive palettes, like the XPress 6.5 Measurements palette or Illustrator’s or InDesign’s Control palette, com­pro­mise by pre­sent­ing dif­fer­ent con­trols based on cur­rent tools, tasks, or select­ed objects. Although effi­cient to a point, these solu­tions have nev­er gone far enough. In InDesign, for exam­ple, the Control palette presents char­ac­ter and para­graph con­trol options only when the Type tool is active, but, as any InDesign user knows, con­trol over text for­mat­ting can also be exer­cised when text frames are select­ed with the Select or Direct Select tools–but not with the aid of the Control palette. Character and para­graph con­trols are hid­den from the InDesign Control palette until the Type tool is select­ed. There isn’t a way to change Control palette modes man­u­al­ly, which is the only thing hold­ing the Control palette back from com­plete­ly replac­ing sev­er­al float­ing palettes.

XPress 7 bridges the gap between the application’s idea of what con­trols are rel­e­vant and the user’s. The Measurements palette is still context-sensitive, but you can now man­u­al­ly change between any of its nine com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent modes on the fly through tabs at the top of the Measurements palette.

By default, the mode tabs bar is hid­den, appear­ing only when the mouse rolls over the palette. I liked the tabs so much I set them to always show with a sim­ple right-click on the Measurements palette title bar, which, inci­den­tal­ly, is anoth­er way to tog­gle the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the oth­er float­ing palettes.

All the most com­mon tasks, for­mer­ly only avail­able in the Modify and Attributes dialogs, are now dis­trib­uted through the dif­fer­ent modes of the Measurements palette. The abil­i­ty to change text box insets, change frame bor­ders, and adjust runarounds all on the fly, with­out time-consuming dia­log box­es, are phe­nom­e­nal pro­duc­tiv­i­ty enhance­ments. If your lay­out expe­ri­ence is lim­it­ed to XPress, the abil­i­ty to see your objects and the entire page as you do things like set and change tab stops will have you grin­ning like a Cheshire cat.

If you’re wor­ried about fin­gers pro­grammed through years of XPress sud­den­ly fum­bling with­out the need to con­stant­ly press CMD+M (CTRL+M) for Modify, CMD+SHIFT+F (CTRL+SHIFT+F) for Formats, and CMD+SHIFT+T (CTRL+SHIFT+T) for Tabs, rest easy, friend: The dialogs are still there, and the key­board com­mands haven’t changed. They’re just no longer necessary.

Space/Align
How much could Quark pos­si­bly improve some­thing as straight for­ward as Space/Align? You’d be surprised.