The new Composition Zone feature makes parts of a layout available for editing by other XPress users. And the redesigned palette now offers easy access to functions such as drop shadow and tab controls. One nice touch unique to QuarkXPress is the ability to switch modes in the Measurements palette-for instance, from text formatting to frame formatting-without having to change tools first. This contextual approach lets you avoid using dialog boxes for most of your work-a real time-saver. As you start working with an object, the palette displays only the controls appropriate to the current selection. In a few cases, XPress improves upon the original.įor example, the central Measurements palette, which provides quick access to a selected object’s attributes, now offers many more controls than in previous versions. Most of the QuarkXPress 7 additions duplicate capabilities pioneered by its rival, Adobe InDesign. (However, XPress 7 did mess up the transparency in a few imported Photoshop files tested for this review.) Catching up to InDesign This feature augments the Photoshop effects capability introduced in version 6.5’s Vista plug-in. XPress also now can apply effects filters to alpha channels, so you can adjust an imported image’s transparency in all kinds of ways. (InDesign just puts a colored rectangle in the place of the missing character.) And you can now align objects relative to the page’s boundaries, not just to the selected items’ boundaries. This allows you to see the text, though you’ll still need the missing font to print it correctly. If characters are missing from the current font, the new Font Fallback feature substitutes the same characters in a different font on screen. This approximates InDesign CS2’s object styles, which allow consistent formatting of objects. And XPress 7 now lets you decide whether to synchronize just the content, just the box attributes, or both. Version 6.0 ( ) now manages graphics and shapes, not just text, across a project, so changes to one instance are reflected in all. QuarkXPress 7 introduces several other features that most users will appreciate. And the new palettes (right) provide quick access to common functions. You can now open the same document in multiple windows, making it easier to compare items within your layouts. (You must first enable this feature, which is buried in the Modify dialog box-or you may stumble across its icon in the Measurements palette.) Other innovations You can also control how text flows from cell to cell using the familiar Link tool.Īlthough the awkward linked-cell approach remains, version 7 does introduce several table enhancements: you can now create header rows that repeat on subsequent pages you can break a table at a specified column or row, making it easy to flow it across multiple boxes or pages and table cells can expand automatically in depth as you add text. This approach does have some advantages: because each cell is essentially its own box, you can rotate text within each, import pictures, and generally format each one as if it were a separate box. The Table tool from version 5 is still awkwardly implemented as a series of linked boxes, which makes formatting time-consuming. Quark has not announced when it will offer a QPS version that’s compatible with XPress 7. You’ll have to track them manually or use a tool such as QPS (Quark Publishing System). Workgroups in which multiple users edit the same document typically need to track changes, which the composition zone feature does not do. And to make a composition zone accessible to other users, you need to use the Layout menu, not the File menu option used to share job jackets. Whereas it might make sense to simply double-click on a zone to edit it, in fact you have to access that part of the page via the Item menu. Moreover, some people might find the feature counterintuitive as currently implemented. This feature reduces the need to move large page files around, but it restricts what each user can do to the separate area. Think of it as a frame stored in a separate file that an external user can access and manipulate. The other major unique new feature in QuarkXPress 7 is the composition zone, which lets you specify an area of a layout that you can use in multiple documents, or that another user can work on simultaneously. And the enhanced Measurements palette (bottom) makes it easier to access QuarkXPress 7’s features without delving into dialog boxes. InDesign-inspired features such as transparency and drop shadows expand creative options, such as the duotone background and drop-shadow logo used here.
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