QuarkXPress 8 is the fruit of more than 20 years of development, which in most industries would mean that Quark could sit back at this point and reap the rewards of such a long committment to a single software application. But publishing is unlike other industries and when you factor in the ubiquity of the Web, the proliferation of mobile publishing platforms, and the inexorable rise of competitor Adobe's InDesign, Quark has little choice but to respond to the shifting requirements of the market, all while not allowing its traditional enterprise print publishing clients to stray. The result for this iteration is an XPress that notably offers a new interface promising faster design with fewer clicks; enhanced typographic controls; and a nod in the direction of the tools in the Adobe Creative Suite.

According to Tim Banister, General Manager of Desktop Technology for Quark, “We have combined highly intuitive software with the design control elements that are critical in the creative process, and as a result believe QuarkXPress 8 will not only be a seamless upgrade for existing QuarkXPress users, but the most accessible professional page-layout software for new users to learn as well."

While one should take the words "highly intuitive" with a grain of salt, it's clear that Quark has with this release moved in the direction of making aspects of the design process more hands-on. For example, the Picture Content tool (shown above) allows users to grab, rotate and scale images in real-time without typing in numbers or switching from tool to tool. The Item and Text Content tools now exhibit "smart behavior" that results in less switching between tools, as well as the rotating and managing of multiple items. New buttons provide instant access to master pages and exporting to PDF, EPS, SWF and HTML, as well as new split-view buttons, enhanced contextual menus and customizable active pasteboards. An enhanced Measurements palette makes more functions easily accessible, including new clickable controls for on-the-fly drop-shadow modification. You can now also drag text and pictures from the desktop or any application that supports drag and drop. Or go wild and drag content from QuarkXPress to Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft Word and other applications for direct editing. Hardy sounds like XPress any more, does it?

While Adobe Illustrator is a powerful vector illustration application, it doesn't lend itself to occasional use. Quark has accordingly beefed up the Bézier drawing capabilities of XPress, with users now able to create illustrations directly in their documents. The capabilities of Quark Interactive Designer are now also incorporated into XPress, so it's possible to incorporate sound, video, animation and interactivity into layouts destined for the Web or convert them directly to Flash format.

Other new functionality of note includes the ability to create hanging characters with paragraph-by-paragraph control, something Quark claims is a first in the industry; Adobe Bridge integration; support for advanced eastern and western typography for more than 30 languages; native Illustrator file import; WYSIWYG font rendering; support for importing PDF version 1.7 and earlier; and advanced guide management with Guide Manager Pro.

While QuarkXPress 8 is not currently available, those who purchase or upgrade to QuarkXPress 7 at regular price between May 29, 2008, and August 1, 2008, are eligible to upgrade to QuarkXPress 8 for free. More information is available on the Quark site.