Prepress
Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution Offers New Flash Output Capabilities and Improvements to Automated Publishing Workflows
Wednesday 19. August 2009 - Dynamic Flash Creation and Improved PDF Output Accelerate Production Cycles and Lower Costs
Quark announced today an update to Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution (DPS) that includes the simultaneous release of QuarkXPress 8.1, Quark Publishing System (QPS) 8.1, QuarkCopyDesk 8.1, and QuarkXPress Server 8.1. This release responds to both Quark customers and partners need to speed the delivery of output across multiple channels by automating manual tasks. As part of the update, Quarks dynamic publishing technologies now allow for the automatic creation of dynamic Flash output.
“The ability to automatically produce Flash output is critical for the delivery of relevant, rich, and engaging communications across multiple media. With this update to our dynamic publishing solutions, we advance our customers ability to deliver higher-quality information and shorten production cycles,” said PG Bartlett, senior vice president of product management for Quark. “In addition to the Flash output capabilities, many of the enhancements weve made across the board will help organizations improve their publishing processes and reduce cost.”
QuarkXPress Server 8.1, a core component of Quarks dynamic publishing capabilities, is the engine within Quark DPS and Quark QPS that now dynamically produces Flash. The ability to create Flash automatically lets customers create customized Flash banner advertisements and Web content on-the-fly, which speeds the delivery of personalized communications, reduces the risk of errors, and enables automated, multichannel publishing so they can better connect with their audiences.
The QuarkXPress Server 8.1 release also includes many new features requested by customers that aid in layout automation and improved PDF output, including:
– Dynamic Layout: With QuarkXPress Server, users can define text and picture boxes to dynamically adjust to fit to the content. Users can also easily define the size and location of boxes in order to dynamically position content relative to other content in the layout. It is useful for newsletters, technical documentation, magazine pages, and books to accommodate content that varies in length.
– Native Transparency PDF Generation: Native Transparency mode allows objects to which transparency has been applied within QuarkXPress to remain unflattened in the final PDF output. This results in faster PDF export of both QuarkXPress files and complex transparency jobs from QuarkXPress Server. It also enables printers to more easily adjust, color manage, and otherwise manipulate PDF files produced by QuarkXPress Server. As a result, printers gain greater control over their PDF workflow.
– Layers in PDF: QuarkXPress Server is now the only publishing server that gives layer-by-layer control of its output. Users can specify which individual QuarkXPress layers to embed or suppress in a PDF and preserve them as layers within the PDF. With this capability, printers receive a single PDF file from their clients and can print multiple versions of the document from the file. This capability allows users to easily and quickly produce customized marketing materials, such as regional in-store flyers and multilingual versions of a product specification sheet.
Additional updates in the QPS 8.1 release developed based on customer feedback include:
– New Search Capabilities: QPS Web Hub now provides more powerful searches including nested searches and “ask searches.” An ask search can ask for user input at the time of the search, which lets users create searches that are more flexible so they can find assets faster and with greater precision.
– Workflow Enhancements for QPS Web Hub include the capability to:
Check-in, check-out, and edit files such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and more
Create QuarkCopyDesk articles from templates
View, insert, edit, and delete comments within a QuarkCopyDesk article
View a Flash version of a QuarkXPress interactive layout
Work in the certified browser of their choice, including Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome, Firefox 3, and Safari