Designorati » Print » InDesign CS 3, QuarkXPress 7: A Survey Worthy of James Bond

InDesign CS 3, QuarkXPress 7: A Survey Worthy of James Bond

By Elisabetta Bruno On 25th November 2005 @ 07:47 In Graphic Design, Features | No Comments

An intriguing survey, sent to a list of chosen, reveals the secrets of the two forever-enemies.

My name is XPress, QuarkXPress. That’s how the survey mailed yesterday to what seems to be Quark’s press list could have been entitled. The purpose of the survey seems to be to find out what users think of the current two Desktop Publishing giant applications. However what’s more intriguing is the list of features listed in that survey, features that allegedly belong to QuarkXPress 7 and InDesign CS 3, the upcoming releases of the two top rated layout applications.

Pariah S. Burke lets us in the survey, reporting the list of features contained within, without edits, so that we can all draw our conclusions. Pariah Burke says in [1] LEAKED! Creative Suite 3, InDesign CS3, QuarkXPress 7 Features:

As part of an online survey initiated just a few hours ago by AbsolutData Research & Analytics on behalf of an unnamed “major software company,” survey participants were asked to make judgments about their likelihood of buying “much improved” products. These “next generation” products are identified as QuarkXPress 7, InDesign CS3, and the Adobe Creative Suite 3—complete with a detailed list of product features and the Creative Suite lineup.

Follows Pariah’s 4-page-long article, listing the new features of QuarkXPress 7 and InDesign CS 3. However the survey doesn’t only talk about the two Desktop Publishing application, as Pariah himself [2] reports:

According to the Absolute Data survey, Creative Suite 3 Premium will include the usual lineup of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Version Cue, Adobe Bridge, and Acrobat Professional. A new edition, Creative Suite 3 Platinum, will allegedly replace GoLive with Dreamweaver, and throw in Flash.

While Adobe stated that they did not sponsor the survey, Quark has been absolutely silent. The allegedly “major software company” that apparently has commissioned AbsolutData Research & Analytics is a mistery, though Pariah Burke states:

Judging by the questions asked and the manner in which invitations to participate were distributed, the several dozen query survey was almost surely sponsored by a certain Denver-based software company.

Even more misterious is how a company outside of Adobe, very likely Quark, knows all the new features of InDesign’s successor. Whether those features are true or not, this survey has certainly made some jawls drop. Per the survey QuarkXPress 7 and InDesign CS 3 seem to have come to a feature draw. Yet, as I always say, will QuarkXPress arrive on time before too many people switch to InDesign?

Related articles: [3] Online Survey Suggests Adobe Creative Suite 3/QuarkXPress 7 Makeup?, by Samuel John Klein on designorati:graphic design.