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This article is from April 28, 2011, and is no longer current.

Review: QuarkXPress 9

Return to page 1 of this review.
E-Publishing Features
QuarkXPress 9 can export to three kinds of electronic publishing formats: ePUB, Blio eReader, and iPad apps.
Export to ePUB. ePUB (an open e-book standard) is used for plain layouts with inline pictures, since the reader may adjust the appearance of the tex. You can create simple e-books and publish to e-bookstores such as Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble NOOK, and Amazon Kindle. You can also export existing QuarkXPress book layouts in ePUB format. QuarkXPress 9 includes a new Reflow View that lets you configure the content separately from the layout to prepare it for reflow-based outputs such as ePUB. It can also automatically create an ePUB table of contents from the Reflow View’s article structure. You can assign metadata to your ePUB layout, such as author, publisher, ISBN number, keywords, and a description. You can even include a spine image, which will display on the bookshelf in any ePUB reader.
Design for the Blio eReader. The Blio eReader format can accommodate books and other publications that range from plain to media-rich. In QuarkXPress 9, you can enhance eBooks with interactive elements and take advantage of a Read Logic feature that makes it easy for readers to follow long stories.
In addition to being a free, downloadable Windows application, the Blio eReader is also pre-installed on Windows computers from Toshiba, HP, and Dell. Blio claims that the Blio eReader will soon be available on devices that run the iOS, Android, and Silverlight platforms. Blio representatives told me that a Mac version is slated for later this year, but none of their promotional materials mention it.
App Studio for QuarkXPress. iPad apps can look like all sorts of things, but publication apps usually differ from eBooks or Blio files in that they provide and manage subscriptions to publications, and they have interfaces that are less like traditional books. Quark says that with App Studio, you’ll be able to create customized apps for the iPad and distribute them through Apple’s App Store. Quark also says that App Studio can either repurpose existing content or create content specifically for the iPad. The apps can include video/audio players, slideshows, scrollable regions, Web overlays, pop-up windows, buttons, and hyperlinks.
Sadly, the App Studio is not included in the initial release of QuarkXPress 9. Quark promises to release it “within 90 days” of the release of QuarkXPress 9. (Based on the April 26 release date of QuarkXPress 9, that would be July 26, 2011.) If you’re interested in iPad publishing now, Quark is offering an iPad Publishing Service where they’ll configure an app for you. CreativePro.com will publish my mini-review of App Studio soon after it’s available.
Tagging Content
The Blio and ePUB formats require you to tag content so that e-readers know which content belongs with what other content, and their logical place in the text hierarchy. For example, you need to tag a headline as a headline so the e-reader knows to format it as a headline on the reading device. You also need to tag pictures, captions, bylines, and so forth, to keep them together in the flow of reading. You apply tags from the Reflow Tagging palette, which looks and functions a lot like the Style Sheets palette.

When tagging text in Reflow View, this is how the text appears when you apply each tag.

These are the text tags available to you in the Reflow Tagging palette.
There are two levels of text tagging: paragraph tags and character tags. Paragraph tags assign levels to text, such as headline, subhead, body, byline, pullquote, section/chapter name, and so on. Character tags simply force a selection of text to display as plain, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superior, inferior, or superscript.
Unfortunately, QuarkXPress 9 doesn’t map text Style Sheets to these tags, nor can you assign keyboard shortcuts to the tags. So to tag content, you must click on it, then click on the tag, then click on the content, then click on the tag, then…. Another drawback: Text edits you make in Reflow View are not reflected in the text on the layout page. To be fair, Quark makes it clear that applying tags should be done after all the text is final.
Blio Interactivity, Slideshows, and Export
Adding Interactivity and Slideshows. Adding interactivity and slideshows to a Blio e-book is almost as simple as adding a picture to a picture box. For a slideshow, you simply choose a folder full of pictures. When you view the page in the Blio eReader, the picture box will have controls for displaying the slideshow. (Note that all pictures must be at 100% scale and cropped as you want to see them in the picture box. Fortunately, Quark lets you export any or all pictures from a page, in any common format and at 100% scale and cropped as you see it in the QuarkXPress picture box.)
To add HTML to a Blio layout, you click on an empty picture box and point it to the HTML file. You can choose to embed the HTML file and its associated files, or simply link to them. The Blio eReader has a built-in HTML parser to display Web pages inside the picture box.
To add a live, online website to a Blio layout, you also use a picture box and give it a URL to display. Again, the website will appear inside the picture box in the Blio eReader.
Exporting. Exporting a layout as an eBook for Blio eReader is a one-step operation. If you have Windows, you’ll be able to preview it in the free Blio eReader. Mac users will have to wait for a Mac version of the Blio eReader. Exporting a layout as an ePUB is also a one-step operation.
The process of tagging text and page items, adding interactivity and slideshows, and exporting to Blio or ePUB is as simple and straightforward as possible.
Buying Advice
The new features in QuarkXPress 9 are almost totally about making e-books and improving the workflow for producing traditional books and other publications. If your work involves lots of formatting of lengthy text, this upgrade will pay for itself quickly. If you skipped upgrading to QuarkXPress 8, you’ll want QuarkXPress 9 for the hundreds of new features added in QuarkXPress 8, along with version 9’s more efficient, refined interface.
 


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  • Anonymous says:

    If it walks like a duck… it’s still Quark and their interface engineers continue their errant ways. Used to be great (when nothing else was there)… now it’s run its course.

  • Anonymous says:

    Thanks for the review Jay.

    Does the ePUB export support the ePUB 3.0 spec? Specifically, audio and video? If you have these media elements in your layout, will Quark add the audio/video tags?

    How clean is the resulting ePUB? (CSS specifically)
    Can you export just the content and choose an existing CSS file?

    thanks again and I look forward to seeing you at the Print and ePublishing Conference next month.

    James Fritz

  • Jay J Nelson says:

    Hi James. I asked Quark, and they said:

    “If you want to use a custom CSS you can replace the file XTensions/DigitalPublishing/Templates/css/style.css and that file will be used when you export ePUB from QXP. You do have to keep the same element names that are already defined in the CSS, but you can give them your own properties. Also check out the Examples folder in the path listed above — it has some edited CSS to show a few different things that one might do with custom CSS. Also keep in mind that ePUB readers have wildly different support for CSS properties so test, test, test.”

  • Jay J Nelson says:

    Hey James, I asked Quark about QuarkXPress 9 supporting audio and video in ePUB exports, and it doesn’t.

  • Jay J Nelson says:

    James, the ePUB export files from QuarkXPress 9 pass the epubcheck utility:

    https://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/

    That should mean it’s pretty darned clean! :-)

  • Anonymous says:

    Thanks for the answers!

  • Anonymous says:

    As a long-time user of Quark, since v. 3.0. I am very disappointed in v.9. It does not seem to be capable of holding settings, i.e. document size, and dpi when you export to pdf or ps files.
    Our manufacturer keeps rejecting our files for production because of these reasons and multiple glyph errors. No one, including Quark seems to have any answers. Looks like we will have to make the switch to InDesign. QuarkXpress is costing us valuable time, money, and resources. Very disappointing and aggravating.

  • Anonymous says:

    I haven’t seen this problem. I just now did a test, and the document did keep the resolution (DPI) setting that I set for Transparency in the PDF Options dialog.

    I exported the PDF, closed the document, then reopened the document in QuarkXPress 9 — the transparency settings were kept for PDF output.

    Also, what do you mean about “document dimensions”? My PDFs are the same size as the documents I exported.

  • Anonymous says:

    Thanks, the review helps a lot.

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  • Anonymous says:

    I do a magazine and I was testing Q9 at a friend’s studio. I like it but I encountered one huge prob. When I copied and pasted a page from a multi-page, left and rt facing document, the text which was left and right justified in several linked columns and contains a lot of Tracking, always reflows. Tracking has to be done all over again on the new doc. I even opened the layout holding the OPTION button to make sure everything was updated to Q9 before I copied and pasted. Is there a fix for this?

  • Anonymous says:

    Found the problem. Original text layed out in Q7, copied and pasted into new Q9 doc. Copying + pasting within Q9 with Q9 originated docs not a problem.

  • Anonymous says:

    Your comments re: Quark won the first round of Design programs is incorrect. Aldus Pagemaker won the first round before Quark was even inveted and then Adobe bought Aldus and years later replaced pagemaker with InDesign 1.0

  • Anonymous says:

    i still an awful awful program. Should be called Derpty Derpty Xpress. Why further postpone the inevitable plunge into the dark abyss. Adobe is, and for the foreseeable future, will be king.

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