Matrix are pleased to announce that all their applications now work with both QuarkXpress 8 and Adobe InDesign CS4.

With a user base that is spilt roughly 70:30 between Quark and InDesign, we're committed to providing support to both applications as quickly as possible, and with both applications featuring a host of new and exciting features it's still "neck and neck" in the DTP race.

InDesign CS4 New Features

  • Live Preflight

    Preflight while you design. Continuous preflighting alerts you to potential production problems in real time so you can quickly navigate to a problem, fix it directly in layout, and keep working.
  • Customizable Links panel

    Find, sort, and manage all of your document's placed files in the customizable Links panel. View attributes that are most critical to your workflow such as scale, rotation, and resolution.
  • Conditional Text

    Deliver multiple versions of a document for different users, all from a single Adobe® InDesign® source file.
  • Cross-references

    Simplify the writing, production, and management of long documents with flexible and powerful cross-references that dynamically update as content is changed or moved within a document.
  • Interactive document design with SWF file export

    Transform page layouts into dynamic SWF files without working in the Adobe Flash® authoring environment.
  • Smart Text Reflow

    Automatically add pages at the end of a story, selection, or document when text is overset using this new preference.
  • Page transitions in SWF and PDF files

    Apply page transitions such as curl, wipe, dissolve, fade, and more to individual pages or all spreads, and output to SWF or PDF.
  • Export to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (XFL)

    Export documents to the XFL format and open them in Flash CS4 Professional with the visual fidelity of your original InDesign layout maintained.
  • Smart Guides

    Quickly align, space, rotate, and resize single or multiple objects with the help of dynamic guides. The guides, object dimensions, rotation angles, and x and y coordinates appear dynamically so you can quickly snap an object's edge or its vertical or horizontal center to another object or page edge in the layout.
  • Spread Rotation

    Temporarily rotate the spread view without physically turning your monitor. Enjoy full editing capability at 90° and 180° angles so that you can easily include nonhorizontal elements in your designs.
 

QuarkXPress 8 New Features

  • Picture Content Tool

    Place, scale, rotate, and offset images and get a visual preview as you crop. No switching to separate tools.
  • Bezier Pen Tool

    Drawing tools like those found in Illustrator and other graphics programs are right in the program.
  • Drag and Drop

    No need to pre-define boxes to hold text or images. Just drag text and images from your desktop or from other applications including Adobe Bridge. And the drag and drop works the other direction from QuarkXPress into your graphics software.
  • Simplified Tools Palette

    Improvements to use of familiar tools along with single-key commands consistent with other programs such as Photoshop. Get more details about the interface tool changes in QuarkXPress 8.
  • Built-in Flash

    Turn existing projects into Flash or create all new Flash projects right inside QuarkXPress 8. Supports Flash (SWF) creation, conversion, and export in over 30 languages.
  • Synchronize Print, Web, and Flash Content

    Using a Shared Content feature you can design once and have content suitable for print, Web, and Flash with a single click.
  • Flash Without Programming

    The built-in Flash authoring requires no separate program, no programming skills. Uses a page-based model rather than a timeline for creating interactive design.
  • Hanging Characters

    Offers precise control and customization of hanging characters to include text margin alignment, fonts, left or right side settings, and use as drop caps. Hanging character settings can be defined down to the paragraph level and integrated into style sheets.
  • Design and Baseline Grids

    Apply unique grids to each master page and to individual boxes. Grids can be created manually or automatically based on various settings. Snap align grids.
  • Unicode and OpenType Support

    You'll find WYSIWYG font menus, Glyph palettes searchable by character or Unicode number, and support for over 20 new OpenType features in East Asian scripts.


Catalog Management | Database Publishing | Digital Asset Management