Denver, CO - Quark announced today QuarkXPress 9, the newest version of QuarkXPress, which will allow designers to publish directly to digital devices and increase their productivity with new features for design automation. As the graphic design and page-layout software that puts designers at the center of the creative process, QuarkXPress already helps creative and corporate professionals create design-rich layouts that can be published to print, Web, and interactive Flash (SWF) media. QuarkXPress 9 will now give designers the power to design for and publish to digital devices in a variety of formats, while also offering them even more control over the execution of their creative visions.

Invitation to Launch Event

Today Quark is hosting an online launch event to unveil QuarkXPress 9, review its new capabilities, and introduce early adopters and partners. To view the launch event, please visit: http://godigitalnow.quark.com.

Digital Publishing with QuarkXPress 9

QuarkXPress 9 sets a precedent for digital publishing by offering designers a flexible and cost-effective array of options for creating content that can be published to digital devices - e-readers, smartphones, and tablets - with one tool, and without programming code. Whether a designer needs to publish directly from QuarkXPress to the iPad, create content for an e-book, or reach an expansive audience through the Blio eReader, QuarkXPress 9 can help.

App Studio for QuarkXPress: With App Studio for QuarkXPress, designers will have a dedicated design environment within QuarkXPress 9 for creating content for the iPad. Designers will be able to create customized apps for the iPad, distribute their apps through the Apple App Store, and then publish richly designed, interactive content to the app. QuarkXPress 9 provides familiar tools to easily repurpose existing content or to design content specifically for the iPad that includes video/audio players, slideshows, scrollable regions, Web overlays, pop-up windows, buttons, and hyperlinks.*

Design for the Blio eReader: The Blio eReader is a free, multi-platform, multi-device application that presents eBooks just like the printed versions, in full color and with all of the features of the ideal eReader. The Blio eReader can be downloaded free from www.blio.com and is also pre-installed on millions of Windows computers from Toshiba, HP, and Dell, as well as devices that run the iOS, Android, and Silverlight platforms. QuarkXPress 9 is the only page layout software with direct support for the Blio eReader, including the ability to enhance eBooks with interactive elements and a Read Logic feature that separates the print experience from the digital experience.

Export to ePUB: QuarkXPress 9 includes an easy option for exporting to ePUB, the free and open e-book standard developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Designers can create traditional text-based e-books and publish to e-bookstores such as Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble NOOK, and Amazon Kindle. Book publishers can also export existing QuarkXPress layouts in ePUB format. QuarkXPress 9 includes a new Reflow View that allows designers to configure the content behind their layout to prepare it for reflow-based outputs such as ePUB. Designers can also automatically create an ePUB table of contents from the Reflow View's article structure.

Design-driven Automation

In addition to its innovative digital publishing capabilities, QuarkXPress 9 includes new features that help automate the design process. The features are instrumental in increasing productivity and alleviating many manual, time-consuming design tasks.

Conditional Styles: This new feature allows designers to automatically style content based on powerful styling rules

Bullets and Numbering: Compatible with Microsoft Word import and export, the new Bullets and Numbering feature of QuarkXPress 9 makes it even easier to format ordered and unordered lists and complex multi-level outlines

Callouts: With the Callouts feature, boxes and groups move automatically with text as determined by the designer; callouts can be positioned relative to the page, spread, text box, paragraph, or character

ShapeMaker: A wizard for easily creating or modifying hard-to-draw shapes such as waves, polygons, stars, and spirals, ShapeMaker also allows designers to create unique corner effects

ImageGrid: Allows designers to import and automatically build grids of images with a variety of layout options; also supports image captioning
Linkster: Enables designers to unlink and relink text boxes that already contain text, to unlink stories spanning multiple pages, and to link or unlink boxes without disrupting existing text

Story Editor: Provides a word-processor-like view within QuarkXPress, which is most helpful when text within a layout is difficult to read and when reviewing stories that span multiple pages

Cloner: The smartest and most efficient way to clone design elements, Cloner allows designers to copy items or pages to other pages or layouts and can be used to combine layouts or split them apart

Availability and Pricing

QuarkXPress 9 will ship in April 2011 and the price will match the current price of QuarkXPress 8: $799 for a full product license and $299 for upgrades from QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7. It will be available through authorized Quark resellers and through the Quark Store. App Studio for QuarkXPress - which enables publishing to the iPad - will be available as a free update to QuarkXPress 9 users within 90 days after QuarkXPress 9 ships.

Buy QuarkXPress 8, Get QuarkXPress 9

From February 23, 2011 to April 30, 2011, anyone who purchases or upgrades to QuarkXPress 8 at the regular price is eligible to upgrade to QuarkXPress 9 for free. In addition, any customers who purchased QuarkXPress 8 between January 1, 2011 and February 23, 2011 are entitled to a complimentary upgrade to QuarkXPress 9. Those who qualify should complete the QuarkXPress 9 upgrade redemption form located here: http://www.quark.com/buy8get9/. Valid serial numbers and validation codes established between January 1, 2011 and April 30, 2011 will be necessary to redeem the free upgrade to QuarkXPress 9.

* App Studio for QuarkXPress will be made available for free to QuarkXPress 9 users within 90 days of the QuarkXPress 9 ship date. For designers interested in iPad publishing now, Quark is offering an iPad Publishing Service for QuarkXPress in which Quark will configure a starter iPad app with a customer's logos and colors and enable the enrichment of QuarkXPress content, which can then be published to that app. Users of the service will be able to migrate to QuarkXPress 9 for iPad publishing once App Studio for QuarkXPress is released.