The Screen View: Interfacing with QuarkXPress 7

The recently-released QuarkXPress 7 public beta has allowed the design public (indeed, any public) at large a chance to download and get a look at what Quark’s been cooking up for the past few years – and a chance to see how good the new application looks. What improvements have obtained?

The QuarkXPress 7 public beta in action on the Macintosh desktop. Seems the same, but a closer look gives up new features to the attentive.

This last week, Denver-based graphics software stalwart Quark,Inc released its layout and aggregation flagship, QuarkXPress version 7, as a public beta. This has given the public at large (not just the design public, but anyone who can download the program) the chance to set it loose and see how this cat runs.

One aspect that Quark has hinted at is interface improvments. This is something of a necessary thing to do; Adobe’s polished, highly-designed interfaces, meant to give an impression of continuity across the entire Creative Suite, and stands as an achievement of cool design. Quark, on the other hand, has scarcely changed its interface look since the release of version 4, and this can contribute to the feeling of using an outdated application, regardless of how the kitten under the hood purrs.

With this in mind, lets take a little tour of the new XPress and see where it differs.

The view from the screen

Once QuarkXPress 7 is launched, an immediate difference becomes apparent; the “new look” of Quark, Incorporated, as widely publicized in their rebranding which happened in late 2005, has made it into the splash screen. Gone is their familiar water lily in favor of the blocks and bars of flat color and abstract design of the new Quark, complete with the new type style. This might not be the old XPress after all?

When the program is out on the desktop, though, the initial feeling is one of sameness. It looks rathermuch like Quark 4, 5, and 6. The toolbar, that center of productive access, seems rather unchanged, but for the addition of a new tool – the composition zone tool – between the unlinking tool and the star tool.

Quark’s floating palettes now appear in a unitary strip instead of separated pieces. Palettes can be added to and subratcted from this strip and saved as customized palette sets.

There are definite improvements, however; they give themselves up to the careful observer. And, of course, there are some one will kind of run into.

A close perusal of the palette collection will yield some new insights.

Palettes in QuarkXPress have not, and still do not, contain access to every function. Quark’s paradigm has been largely in the direction of dialog boxes, a route which Quark fans hold reduces screen clutter. Adobe apps, in contrast, make a great deal of program functionality available through floating palettes.

Adobe mitigates this by making palettes very flexible. Palettes in Adobe apps can be grouped, snapped closed, saved in collections (workspaces), displayed in various forms, and, in InDesign, tucked under the very edge of the screen, snapping out when needed like tool drawers. Whether or not Adobe’s preference for palettes creates screen clutter, the applications give the user ways to manage this in their own way.

New tastes for the palettes

Quark hasn’t increased the number of palettes, but the new ones in version 7 beta make more functions available to the user without having to go to the dialog box if one wishes not to. The new Control Palette (already well covered by Elisabetta Bruno here) responds contextually to what the user is doing, bringing forward many process-specific features formerly only available through dialog boxes. It is also somewhat bigger than the old Measurements Palette.

QuarkXPress 7’s new Colors palette. Note the disclosure triangle (top, left) the palette menu icon (top, right), and the opacity control

The real quantum leap, as far as XPress 7 goes, is in the other floating palettes. Recall that, when XPress 6.5 launches, the palettes (color, layers, page layout, etc) launch as separate screen objects that can be either seen or dismissed. XPress 7’s palettes open as one unitary group, not as separate bits.

The palettes themselves have had a minor makeover. The palette title bars now have a subtle gradation, giving them a feeling of depth and shape. Also appearing are two new features: a disclosure triangle to the left of the menu title, and a double-pointed arrow to the right. When clicked on, this double arrow produces the palette menu usually produced by control-clicking over the palette, in a manner which reminds one of Adobe’s ‘flyout’ menus.

Clicking on the double-arrow on the right end of the palette title bar reveals the palette “control” menu in a manner reminiscent of Adobe’s flyout palette menu

The palettes cannot be dragged away from one another, but they can be shuffled in order in the strip by dragging. Adding and subtracting palettes from the array is accomplished by a non intuitive yet simple process; control-click (or right-click) on any palette’s title bar: the options to detach or close the palette are the first two items on that menu, followed by the list of palettes with check marks by each visible palette. Click on “Detach” (”Detach Colors”, for example), and the focussed palette breaks away as a stand-alone. To add a palette to the group, control (or right-) click on the title bar of any palette in that group and check the desired palette. If that palette is in another group, it will disappear from that group and join the new palette. This, along with XPress’s new ability to save palette groups (much like Adobe’s saved workspaces), means that now more than ever Quark fans will be XPressing themselves their own way.

Another pretty face

During development of XPress 7, Quark intimated a number of other improvments. Germane to interface and viewing is the rethinking of Quark’s display engine. Up to and including version 6 and 6.5, Quark depended on QuickDraw to render things to the screen. With version 7, XPress implements a new technology called XDraw, which promised smoother text and shape rendering. This is the key to XPress 7’s new transparency amongst other things; the end result is that XPress 7 just plain looks better than XPress 6.5.

A text box in XPress 6.5, viewed at 140% zoom. Note rough text display. Cyan background is opaque; the only way to see through to the illustration below is to specify a background of “none”.

An identical layout in XPress 7. XDraw provides for more sophisticated display of text at reduced sizes, and adjusting the opacity of the background allows us to see through to the object beneath.

The illustration shows two text boxes filled with jabberwocky; one in XPress 6.5, the other in the version 7 beta. Both are at a magnification of 140 per cent, close to the point at which my display started showing jagged text in 6.5. The improvement is obvious.

Text throughout the application looks better than 6.5, even in the palettes and dialogs. Even the paste board drop-shadows, hard edged in 6.5, have acquired a soft sophistication.

I can see right through you

Transparency, depending on who one speaks with, is either one of the wholly Holy Grails of electronic layout, the New Black, or another passing fad. Regardless, it is in high demand and conventional wisdom seem to have it that Quark had better bring it if it wants XPress to remain a player. That’s just what it’s done.

Transparency is easily available through the “Opacity” box in the Colors palette. Before, the closest thing to transparency was a setting of “none” for your box backgrounds. Now, it’s merely a slider move or two digits away. One can even include them in blends.

Fad or no, transparency opens a great many artistic design possibilities to XPressers formerly only available to Adobe users.

A layout in XPress 6.5, featuring text blocks on top of a photo illustration. The text blocks can be colored, but can’t be seen though. The results suggest trying a different layout approach

A similar layout in XPress 7. Perhaps not the greatest layout ever done, but the addition of sophisticated transparency control allows text on pictures easily and greater artistic possiblities.

Not the final word

This overview has limited itself to the interface and certain usability issues. In the big war of the layout giants, the individual battles may well be won on small points. On the point of interface, Quark has brought it with solid improvements that stand to its credit.

But it’s an evolution, not a revolution. The improvements will charm Quark fans, but it must be said that whether or not they will woo recently converted InDesignistas back to the Quark camp (or stanch the flow of Quark users to Adobe) remains an open question. It should certainly garner attention.

For now, as far as Quark users go, as someone famously once said, for those who like this sort of thing, this should be just the sort of thing they like.