QuarkXPress has enjoyed some 15 years of total dominance of the professional page layout software arena. However, it now looks set to become an underdog in a market which is increasingly being dominated by Adobe InDesign and the other programs that make up the Adobe Creative Suite, a software bundle which is rapidly becoming a must-have for any serious graphic design software set-up.

Adobe's gang of four products are InDesign, a direct competitor to QuarkXPress often dubbed the Quark-killer, Photoshop, the widely-used image-manipulation software, Illustrator the vector graphics package and Acrobat which is used for creating and optimising PDF files. One huge advantage that Adobe now have over QuarkXPress is the way in which these programs interact with each other.

A fair amount of complacency with their apparently unassailable position as the best page layout program out led Quark to make several key strategic errors such as the release in 2002 of QuarkXPress version 5 for Mac OS 9 (an obsolete version of the Mac operating system) shortly after Adobe had released InDesign 2 which ran on the latest Mac OS X operating system.

Having these two great products battling it out is basically a good thing for the marketplace. QuarkXPress 7 included features which are a clearly a direct response to features introduced in InDesign CS2 and we can expect this kind of tit-for-tat development to continue in future releases of the two programs.

Quark naturally have no plans to come up with a QuarkXPress Creative Suite to rival Adobe. Rather, they are pointing out that before InDesign came along, designers were only too happy to use Adobe products in conjunction with QuarkXPress. They have tightened up the integration between QuarkXPress and Adobe Creative Suite CS3 by adding such features as support for native Photoshop files and the ability to manipulate imported .PSD files using the new PSD Import palette.

Will these tactics be enough to guarantee the survival of QuarkXPress? Most designers and publishing professionals see Adobe Creative Suite as the future. However, QuarkXPress is used in lots of different contexts and by users with vastly differing profiles. By responding to the needs of its potential market, Quark can ensure that QuarkXPress stays alive and continues to be recognised as an excellent piece of software.

About the Author, Andrew Whiteman:

The author of this article has been running training courses on QuarkXPress for many years. He is a trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an established, independent computer training company based in London. Work at home internet business.

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