Quark XPress 8, Full Edition (UK/IRE) (PC/Mac)

Why is anybody even looking at this product anymore? it's dead and buried and the company will likely go the same way. Just get Adobe's InDesign and be done with it. it's the industry standard now.

QuarkXpress is indispensable and as a piece of software is excellent (4 and a half stars) but overpriced as usual. I have upgraded from version 7 thinking that the added "interactive" element In QuarkXpress 8 is applicable to web layouts (animations, videos and buttons, etc) but it is not. However this is not clear in Quark's marketing blurb. The new "interactive" features are solely for making Flash (.swf) presentations so I'd only recommend getting version 8 if that's what you want to do. The improved interface design and extra features in print and web layout modes are nice but there aren't any extra special effects for web designing. Not even the ability for example, to delete the underlines in hypertext links - which really annoys me as it is such a basic design consideration. The upgrade from 7 to 8 is not good value for money so I've given it 2 stars.

Great software which I use heavily for projects at uni. Very quick and easy to getting using and much more intuitive to use than indesign.

We are using QuarkXPress 8.1 to create brochures, customer magazines, collateral, ads and Flash presentations (so pretty much everything).The best thing about it is that it is fast, intuitive and stable. I can't really relate to the experience of other reviews. If Quark becomes unstable, I just change or delete certain preferences, maybe some people don't know about that. You actually have a lot of control over how you want Quark to run.I have tried InDesign CS5 and even in the newest version ID is not as powerful and intuitive as Quark when it comes to creating Flash. I always need Flash Professional to finish off the Flash files when using ID to create interactive material. With Quark I just author, publish and am ready to go - it's brilliant. Once you understand how to use the interactive palette (which is just one palette) building interactive content (for web & flash) is very easy.For our printed material that we create, I find Quark is much more intuitive than ID, featuring an Item Modify dialog where I find all attributes of a box. Plus working with less palettes I find I can create layouts more quickly in Xpress.Best of all, the custom typography, granular scaling, item styles and native transparency for objects and drop shadows of version for me are killer features in 8.1.And as I am using a Mac, I don't care whether more people use Windows, I choose the tools and platforms that make sense for me and help me make and save money. The price might appear high, but when you do commercial work with it, the price is compensated by less than a day's work. I did see recently that Quark offer really cheap student pricing - I wish i'd known about it when i was a student.For me, Quark 8.1 is the perfect tool.