Quark Forums

My client, a print magazine, wants me to take their print product and export it for use on the web. They're thinking along the lines of Adobe's flash paper concept -- something that looks just like a pdf of the print issue, but with clickable corners to turn the pages, live hyperlinks, zooming, etc.

Will Quark 8 do this? If not, do you have any suggestions for the best (easiest) way to generate this kind of document?

 Thanks,

 

John

 

Yes, Quark will do this. And it will do it VERY WELL.

It's why Quark designed QuarkXPress 7 and 8 to work with print, web and interactive (i.e., Flash SWF) projects all within the Quark program itself, including transitions and animations. You can repurpose graphics and text much, much easier this way than jumping to designing in Flash itself.

As a matter of fact, since I started using QuarkXPress 8, I haven't really thought about using Flash for any of my interactive projects, there's simply no need (perhaps for some of the advanced projects, that need may arise).

For an electronic "interactive" brochure or a magazine, there is no substitute for QuarkXPress's Interactive Designer mode...

If you simply need an electronic version without all the "cool" animation features, just creating graphics and text as hyperlinks and exporting as a PDF will do just fine. And yes, QuarkXPress does this VERY WELL, too.

jdb 

 Can QID do a flip page catalog? If so, can you give us a summary of how to go about it? Assume that we are starting with single page quark or pdf files.

Hi, zeta,

can you define what a "flip page catalog" is please?

Thanks
Matthias

 Yes, there are online services that offer "flip page" like this one: http://www.page-flip.com/new-demos/01-simple-catalogue/index.htm

and I didn't know if I could do something similar in QID...

Hi, zeta,

I had a quick look at it and am not sure whether I discovered all features it offers.

By a first glance, yes, you can do everything in Interactive except the nifty "page curl follows mouse" effect to flip pages. In QuarkXPress you can use other effects (like a curtain).

That said, our Silverlight Export prototype has that Page Curl effect.

Thanks
Matthias

 Matthias... thanks for looking. I downloaded Silverlight yesterday, when I tried to run my file, the browser asked to download some plugin... Would that happen for all user? Is there a QID documentation somewhere?

Hi, zeta,

Silverlight - like Flash - needs a browser plug-in to display its content in the browser. So yes, that would happen for any user who doesn't have the plug-in installed yet. Flash has the advantage, that most modern browsers install the Flash plug-in by default.

Also please note that the Silverlight exporter is a prototype, so though it sports the page curl effect it is not as advanced as the Interactive Designer/Layout (yet?).

zeta1600:

Is there a QID documentation somewhere?

Not sure I understand the question. Do you mean for Silverlight?

Thanks
Matthias

 Thanks again Matthias... I was looking to see if there was documentation on how to use Silverlight with QID...

Hi, zeta,

understood.

Currently there is no connection between the two, they are seperate projects. Interactive Designer / Interactive Layout "only" exports Flash.

In future that might be different.

Best
Matthias

P.S.: If you are in Germany this week, come and see me at the Silverlight roadshow:
http://blogs.msdn.com/riablog/archive/2009/02/24/xtopia-kompakt-die-ux-web-ria-roadshow-09.aspx

Take a look at this: http://www.trailerlife.com/images/flash/0905%20FLASHCTCv3.swf It's very developmental but promising. The main problem right now is that many of the images don't bump up to the top pf the boxes. Quark Tech is looking into it. If they can fix, I'll keep working on the UI and see where it goes. If this is what you are thinking about and have further questions, let me know. --bd--

I have now been informed by Quark Tech the issue cited above is a known bug which they do not have a workaround for except to not use frames and have no set date for a fix. Extremely disappointing. --bd--

Hi, bd,

can you do one test please? What if your picture box has even numbers and the magnification of the pictures too?

Is the shift then gone?

Thanks
Matthias

I'm not clear on what you're asking. Can you explain further? Thx, --bd--

Hi, bd,

if I remember correctly, we had (have?)  a bug that under certain picture pixel and box pixel ratios a rounding error occurs and therefore the shift by one pixel.

To see whether that's it, please try a workaround. Load your picture by a 100% (use Picture Effects built into QuarkXPress to easily do so) and try your picture box with different sizes (varying the box by 1px in size).

Does that solve it? If yes, at least you have a workaround and we know we still have one bug to fix.

Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience
Matthias