- Who's On First?
- "Okay Peorge, But What Are We Gonna DO?
- But What About MY Needs?
- Adobe InDesign Juggernaut
- A New Attitude
- Getting It Right
But What About MY needs?
All these new capabilities illustrate Quark’s intention to lead the industry again. By examining the challenges faced by successful design and publishing organizations, and matching them to the available and upcoming technology, Quark is providing completely unique new ways of streamlining workflows.
But that doesn’t immediately mean much to an average designer who simply wants to be able to add drop shadows and transparency effects to page items. Or to organize their palettes. Or 100 other little abilities that QuarkXPress 6 lacked. Quark appears to have listened to the wish list of features provided by designers, and has delivered solutions for some of them. Its approach to drop shadows and transparency is arguably superior to any other on the market. And in keeping with the trademark dedication to efficiency, it takes less effort to produce these effects in QuarkXPress 7 than in any other desktop publishing application.
Regarding the hundreds of other feature improvements Quark could have made, I think it has been less successful. Adobe InDesign, for example, has several dozen useful capabilities that QuarkXPress still lacks. (See following sidebar for list.)
I think it’s a tremendous shame that Quark chose not to include at least some of these helpful features, and I hope (for its own sake) that Quark includes some of them very, very soon.