Oh, QuarkXPress. My fondest Mac memories are tied in with you. It was one of the first programs I ever learned on the Mac. It was also the most frustrating piece of design software ever -- guaranteed to crash the computer at least once an hour, and don't even think about using the Auto Backup feature on the early versions. I learned Quark back in version 3.1.1 and cursed its existence through the next decade ... until Quark 7. It did something that it had never done before -- not crash on my Mac. It was a stable piece of software and while definitely not my preferred design software, it doesn't make me want to cry in a corner if I have to use it.

Quark Inc. is offering to upgrade any version of QuarkXPress - going back to version 3 - to the latest version (8.0.2) for a single upgrade price of € 399/£ 279/$299.

So what if you don't have a serial number? Let Quark know. They have a database of serial numbers and will do their best to find the missing serial number so you can upgrade. Same if you never registered your license to begin with. Quark will also accept a fax or scan of the original installation CD, disks, or receipts as proof of purchase.

And if you happen to have a licensed copy of Quark for Windows, you can still upgrade to version 8 since the upgrade will let you utilize the software on either Mac or Windows.

QuarkXPress 8.0.2 requires OS X 10.4 or higher, G5 PowerPC or Intel processor, 1GB of RAM and 1GB of hard disk space.

Love it or hate it (with the burning fire of a million angry suns), Quark yesterday released QuarkXPress 8, which features new tools for developing for the web, workspace enhancements, and refinements to tools to finally bring it into the 20th century. Steve Sande mentioned back in May that it was coming, and now it's finally here.

Quark 8, the William Shatner of page layout software (old, bloated, sweaty, and desperate to stay relevant), allows you to create content for the web using HTML and Flash without writing any code. This has been a feature of Quark since QuarkImmedia and Quark Interactive Designer, but now appears to be fully rolled into QuarkXPress, to the abject horror of web designers everywhere.

Also, a new feature: A measurements palette. That's right, it's 2008, and they're adding a measurements palette. Also: east-Asian language support and hanging punctuation. Wow. Well done, Quark.

I've been using QuarkXPress since version 3, and having very briefly tried the new version, it's a little depressing to see them keep trying to reclaim their glory years. Small design shops, freelancers, and many printers have largely moved to InDesign for their page layout software. Yes, Quark 8 is light-years ahead of where they were, but still light-years behind where they need to be.

Quark makes its money on giant-scale installations at newspapers and magazines, so we'll see how quickly their enterprise customers adopt this new version. My guess: not very, as many printers I've dealt with overseas, especially in Asia, are still using QuarkXPress 6.

A 60-day trial is available, and is a whopping 517MB to download. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 and a G5 processor or higher. New licenses are $800, and upgrades are a scant $300. Discounts are available for education and non-profit customers, too.

Quark Inc. announced QuarkXPress 8 at the Drupa printing exhibition in Düsseldorf today, the latest version of the high-end design tool for Mac and Windows. Many of the changes to QuarkXPress are in the areas of user interface and workflow, which were criticized by many users after the long-delayed release of QuarkXPress 7.

Some of the interface enhancements include:

• A picture content tool for moving, rotating, and scaling images in real-time
• New Bézier Pen Tools
• An enhanced measurements palette with new controls for modifying drop-shadows
• Drag-and-drop from the desktop, Adobe Bridge, iPhoto, MIcrosoft Word, and the hundreds of other applications that support drag-and-drop
• Instant access to master pages and exports to PDF, SWF, HTML and EPS

QuarkXPress 8 offers improved typographical controls for designers, including hanging characters with multiple presets. There's also built-in support for Flash content creation, which formerly required the purchase of Quark Interactive Designer

Quark also noted that designers who purchase QuarkXPress 7 at regular price between today and August 1, 2008 and those who purchased QuarkXPress 7 or an upgrade between May 1 and today will receive the upgrade for free. The package is expected to ship within 60 days, and no final pricing has been announced.

Thanks to Ling for the tip!

Update: Jay Nelson has a huge writeup of QXP8's features at Planet Quark.

Quark users who upgraded to Quark 7 from Quark 4, 5 or 6 will no longer be denied the legal use of their prior versions after they've installed Quark 7. In a press release issued earlier today, Richard Pasewark, Quark Senior VP of Sales (Americas) and Marketing said "this is in response to customer feedback and is another example of how Quark has fundamentally changed its approach to doing business in the last two years. Customers are thrilled with QuarkXPress 7 and based on user feedback this policy change will help streamline and fast-track the upgrade plans for many customers."

So basically since you paid for both versions Quark will let you actually use both versions. Nice of them, eh?

Quark counts this move (which never should have been at issue to begin with) as one more feather in their oh-so-user-friendly cap, pointing to other changes they've made in the last 2 years like "Free English-speaking technical support" and "The ability to deactivate and re-activate or transfer a license of QuarkXPress 7 from one computer to another without the help of technical support." Call me old fashioned, but I kind of expect those things to begin with.

Still, I give them points for seeing the light on this one. Maybe they'll just stop making boneheaded decisions early on so they don't have to keep "changing their approach" midstream.

Quark named a new CEO today. Raymond Schiavone, "a veteran software company CEO and former GE executive," has joined Quark as President and CEO, replacing Linda Chase who was "acting President," and will remain with the company as Senior VP of Enterprise Products.

Prior to joining Quark, Schiavone was President and CEO of Arbortext, Inc., an industry leader in XML-based authoring and automated publishing software.

Quark says this move signals a new era and will allow the company to aggressively take Quark to the next level.

I hope he plans to do something about that unnecessary audio assault that Quark's homepage greets me with every time I load it. I'll let him get settled into the corner office first before starting a letter writing campaign about that, though.

Quark had two big announcements today.

First up was QuarkXPress Server 7, which they'll be demoing this week in booth 4807 Graph Expo and Converting Expo in Chicago. Formerly known as Quark Dynamic Document Server (QuarkDDS), Server 7 incorporates all the new features of QuarkXpress 7, while Web-based, template-driven process and includes QuarkXPress Server Manager, a tool that "centralizes system administration, manages processing load on multiple servers, and provides reporting on automated publishing tasks."

Next up was the Quark Print Collection, which will be available Oct 30, 2006 but is also being demo'd in Chicago this week. The Print Collection is a comprehensive set of prepress tools for QuarkXPress 7 and Adobe Acrobat 7 which enables the creation of "fully imposed, press-ready files at a price anyone who is involved in the print-production process can afford." The price in question is a mere $299 and the underlying technology was originally developed by A Lowly Apprentice Production (ALAP) Inc, which Quark had previously acquired. The Print Collection package includes Quark Imposer for QuarkXPress, Quark Imposer for Adobe Acrobat, Quark MarkIt, and Quark Item Marks.

The Apple Expo in Paris this year saw a drop in attendance from about 56,000 attendees last year down to 46,000. The downward trend from the 2000 Expo, which saw 80,000 attendees is even more dramatic. Even with the drop, however, the Paris Apple Expo still boasts higher numbers than recent Macworld Expos in San Francisco, which hosted less than 40,000 attendees in January 2006. The Paris decline was blamed on Apple's failure to give a keynote speech this year, amongst other things.

Both Paris and San Francisco still topple London's MacExpo, which attracts an average of 25,000 visitors a year, hopefully including this year where MacExpo kicks off in two weeks. The show will benefit from a confirmed larger Apple booth than last year as well as a major announcement during the Quark Keynote presentation.

If any of you will be attending the MacExpo, don't forget to send us your reports and links to your pics!

Despite some recent logo troubles and the move of design and ad agencies toward Adobe InDesign, Quark seems to be climbing out of the hole it dug itself with its disastrous transition to OS X. Today with version 7.1, QuarkXPress 7–first announced at MacWorld and released in May–became the first major page layout application to make the transition to Universal Binary for the Intel architecture. This move comes a full 6 months before the announced release time-frame for Adobe Creative Suite 3.

With today's announcements of upcoming Leopard technologies, it will be interesting to see what Quark has in store for us with its next version. Perhaps designers will be able to use Time Machine to go back and fix that pesky mistake they made 3 days ago. For now at least, we'll all just have to sit on our hands and wait like good little boys and girls.

I know nothing about QuarkXpress or InDesign as I haven't ever even started up either application. I don't know anything about Photoshop either (shocking, no? I don't mean my ignorance, since I am sure you have all grown accustomed to that, rather I am speaking of the fact that I have never used a Mac for any kind of graphics work). Now, clearly, I am in no position to offer up an opinion about Quark's latest offer, luckily for us Dave Girard at Ars Technica knows both products and has offered up a very detailed review of QuarkXpress.

What does he think? Well, I can tell you that he isn't abandoning his copy of InDesign any time soon, but if you want the details you'll have to read his review.

QuarkXPress 7 has hit the streets, but it oddly isn't a Universal Binary (Steve Jobs, if you remember, announced at January's Macworld event that Quark had a beta UB version available). A UB update to version 7 is reportedly going to be made available later this summer (I guess Adobe isn't the only big software house having trouble). This new version brings plenty of new features to the table including enhancements to typography, color management, transparency (apparently it can do such advanced things as color opacity, drop shadows and alpha channels now), non-destructive mask manipulation, revolutionary 'Composition Zones' which let you design once and use anywhere with live updates, as well as improvements to productivity and collaboration, output and digital workflow and much more. Check out Quark's entire new feature list for the full details, as well as Macsimum News with summaries of what all the new features mean to you.

Quark is also taking QuarkXPress on tour through seven US cities as well as Toronoto, Canada. Take a look at their schedule for details and registration information.

I figure someone out there is still using Quark, so this may be of interest.

Quark has changed their logo yet again. A little while ago they launched a large rebranding effort, only to find that someone else was already using the logo they had just adopted. Talk about awkward.

Since Quark isn't a company that gets down in the dumps about these sorts of things, they soldiered on and came up with this new logo.

What do you think about it?  Is anyone still using Quark?