Comments on: I Shout "Quark Sucks!" Loudest

by: W. Michel

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 02:02:36 +0000

Egad! Does this mean I should quit using my QXP 4.1 on my new Window 7, 64 bit Home Premium? I have already used to create quality .PDFs for
Acrobat 10 X. Hmm, I already read it couldn’t be installed on my XP where I also used it. And on my Vista 64 that was crippleware anyway. Did I do something you folks think I should not have done?

W. michel

by: Matthew

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:10:51 +0000

Quark is full of bugs. Crashes/freezes for no reason, reflows text at random and takes twice as long as InDesign to layout a book. Trying to copy and paste text from a text box in Quark to another location in the same file and it just freeszes with the round disc showing, if I go to force quit applications it says QuarkXpress (not responding).

by: James

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:55:52 +0000

this blog comment layout is pretty kool. haven’t seen anything like this before. I would love to know the script that was used to do this

by: James

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:46:35 +0000

i think indesign is the best

by: Brian

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 09:30:36 +0000

I’ve used Quark for the best part of 8 years helping teenagers in secondary school create an annual magazine - they write, take photographs, lay out pages. I’m only familiar with Quark - I’m not a designer - I’m a writer/photographer. The designer who set the project up did so using Quark and taught me what I needed to know in v. 4. I now use v. 8. I have only occasionally used Indesign. I find it too complex for these youngsters to learn just the basics which they have absolutely no problem coping with in Quark. The original designer left for other work, leaving two non-designe journalists to run the project including myself.

I’m on my own with the project now, waiting to restart after a gap of a year because of the ill health of other journalist. There is pressure to bring in a designer who wants to use Indesign. I don’t think these 13 year olds and upwards will cope. One experiment trying to introduce Indesign last year failed in my opinion because it need fully 100% one-to-one involvement of the tutor with the pupil. Quark doesn’t - at our basic level the youngsters can create pages from scratch - the tutors of course have to tidy up pre-press, make sure all the collects have been done properly and the text is laid out well - then export as PDF.

What do readers think? Can Indesign be used at this very basic simplified entry level? Quark can.

by: christy haynes

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:27:03 +0000

F _ _K this program! f_ _ _ _ _ g bite ass!!

by: space

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:13:52 +0000

i’ve been a graphic designer for a long time and became familiar with nearly all graphics software. quark was my baby. i made it to flips and tricks the likes of which were unheard. upon switching jobs, i was thrust in to a pc only world for a few months and had a director who couldn’t justify purchasing a completely new software package in addition to the adobe suite.
—i was FORCED into indesign. my insane task was to build a complete concept for a full newsletter for presentation from scratch. 3 hours later i was finished. i learned the ins & outs in just that short a time. i can honestly say that i master the program sans instruction or uorial in about 12 hours.

anyone who is a designer has a familiarity with the adobe palette and functions automatically. indesign’s strength is that it plays on the already known. its expanded features with newer versions eliminate some of its flaws by merging more of illustrator and its nuances. it has now become ONE true package [no jokes on that line, please]. quark, even with its improvements is still the outsider looking in.

as far as the backend and prepping for print at a press, that’s not my area of expertise, but every step before that is fluidly handled by indesign. i DO feel bad that i am not the QUARK MONSTER that i used to be. but everything changes.

when looking for new design jobs now, i almost pass on listings that still hold on to quark as the only publication building requirement. the times are moving and i really don’t want to be stuck in that tar pit.

by: Nico

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:22:53 +0000

Hi all, sorry first for my English, I’m mothertongued French. ;-). The main reason why Xpress sucks (I used it 6 years before passing to the “bright side”) is that you spend a day to produce a job that takes few hours with ID. With Xpress, it’s a half day to do the job and the other half to make it compatiple with printing standards (transparency, postscripts errors, compatibility with hi-rez pdf…).
The only good things with Quark? quicker refresh, quicker linkage between text blocks and the ability to use vertical gradients and transparency in paragraph lines.

by: MacBoy

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:15:04 +0000

I’m with #150. The bundled products keep many from even trying Quark today. While I love many of the features in InDesign my main need is speed. Quark runs much faster and many tasks that are cumbersome in ID are a quick click in Quark. Most frustrating is cutting and pasting images in ID. What the heck is “Paste into”? I also love Quark 8’s big handles on images when you select an image box. Resizing and recropping are amazingly easy in Quark compared to ID. If ID just got these few things fixed I’d switch. I’m open to comments.

by: Scott Gibson

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:36:59 +0000

Having used both programs for many years, I must say that Indesign’s arrival on the market was a welcome relief.
I am the Digital prepress manager for a large printing company, and I get files from many different artists with widely divergent skill levels every day. It is so much simpler to tell those submitting artwork for printing to just use Indesign, embed all of your images, and outline all of the document’s fonts.
Then I get one document, no missing links, no quirky font issues popping up with text not quite tracking the same on a PC vs a MAC, and all of the transparency effects work all of the time. Indesign seems to also write a cleaner EPS file and the PDFs that are exported do not have issues with our digital RIP.
Makes my life soooo much easier.

by: Joe Giunt

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:10:02 +0000

I couldn’t disagree more with #150 lysander. I am an old Quark user from both the design and prepress side. When CS1 was introduced, I found it a poor substitue for Quark. It was a clumsy combination of Pagemaker and Quark features put together in a way that made it worse than Quark.

But CS2 and beyond won me over. I am not only a designer, I am a computer graphics instructor. Having to go from teaching Quark to teaching InDesign has reinforced my belief that InDesign is easer for students to learn. Quark has three to four steps necessary to save a style sheet, for example, while InDesign does it in one.

I am not familiar with Quark 8 and will keep an open mind about it. Eight may be the best version of Quark ever marketed and it may blow InDesign out of the water. My guess is that it will be better than InDesign for some things and not as good in others.

And the war continues…

by: Lysander

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:40:11 +0000

Why do most of the comments from Adobe ID fans here; seem to be written either by 12 year-old cuss-kiddies who don’t know which way round to wear a hat, or employees of Adobe’s PR department?
I’ve been in DTP since 1988, and the fact is Quark has always been easier to learn to use from the ground-up, because it doesn’t have to drag around a cart-full of gimmicky whistles and bells that make it far too over-complex for it’s own good. Same with Illustrator v Freehand. In both cases, Adobe decided to make their product as needlessly complicated as their main breadwinner: Photoshop.
Which leads us to the REAL reason for these software packages rise to fame: simply that they are bundled-in with the admittedly indispensable Photoshop; so colleges and smaller firms buy and train with the whole shooting-match at the same time. It’s down to financial pressure more than personal preference. Kids are being raised on Adobe for that reason alone.
Might as well start a site called Walmart v Your town’s main-street full of individual shops. (Guess which one is the Adobe equivalent!)

by: Kevin R

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:22:16 +0000

I love quark 8, I also love indesign CS4 for different reasons. If I need typo total control over every aspect of a job on a repeat basis I’d plump for Indesign, if I want to do something to a deadline it’s Quark every time. Horses for courses, they are both useful tools in the toolbox.

by: Herrmann

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:37:35 +0000

Glad i found this:
ID2Q v4 (Adobe InDesign To QuarkXPress)
NOW SUPPORTING QuarkXPress 8 and Adobe CS4
coz, u know, i sort of have to make a living out of efficiently producing results. since 1991.

by: justin

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:20:20 +0000

I presume this site is sponsored by Adobe? I work in both apps - and cant see much difference between the two - other than qxp is faster?

Thanks

by: Well on the other hand

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:00:52 +0000

While I do agree that Quark sucks. I must say that InDesign is hampered by many annoying features and quirks. For starters all new docs start off in picas (or whatever it is) when you first open the program - so you open a new document then you have to go to preferences and select “inches”. The stupid curser changes tools on its own such as accidentally clicking on box and the tool switching to type on line tool which then you have to go back to the tool bar, crap is hidden everywhere, flipping objects (I’m sure it is there) is hard to find, type if re-sized by dragging the box shows two font sizes- the old and the scaled size. Too much having togo back & forth because the stupid program assumes certain crap or you have to hunt and peck. Way to complicated at times.

by: Josh Tellez

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:25:06 +0000

nobody is finishing the sentence…
“Quark SUCKS….” what?
What does it suck?!! I MUST KNOW!!!!

… :)

P.S. Quark Sucks.

by: Sam

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:50:48 +0000

Thanks for the thoughts. We’ve just received our CS4 package. The other designer is willing to learn and has done research on her own about what seems to be preferred. InDesign is the hands-down winner.
We uploaded both Quark 8 and InDesign CS4 trials and after she saw Quark 8, she felt like she’d have to learn so much over (from Quark 6) that she might as well make the switch to InDesign.

by: Claidheamdanns

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:16:44 +0000

I used to like Quark. I’ve used it for years, both at work and at home.

Now I hate it. In fact I’ve come to loathe it more and more. I took it completely off my system at home, and got a 3rd party plugin (http://markzware.com) to convert all my Quark docs to InDesign CS3.

At work, we are still so backward that we use Quark, when even companies in Third World countries are switching over to InDesign. (While for them, this may be because you can actually afford to buy the whole Creative Suites for as much as it costs to buy one lousy copy of Quark, this is still a good decision on their part.

Quark, you NEVER listened to us the users. You could get away with this when the competition was PageMaker, but not anymore. InDesign is here and it’s time to shape up or ship out.

by: Baumhus

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:27:08 +0000

I was using QXP professionally since 1989 (US-vs. 1.1). I was an (inofficial) Evangelist, Trainer, all time friend of QXP. Later on, 2005, I as forced to switch to ID (vs. 4, 5, 6). After these years I only feel sadness about QXP – and I see very, very clear signs that Quark Inc. will not survive. Sadness because to touch this programm (vs. 8) feels like touching something of the very far past: outdated, in no way sexy, in no way really userfriendly - Brrrrrrrr! I know these feelings very well: The same feelings I got in the 90s used to the Macintosh UI and looking into something like “Windows”. And I have an absolute KILLER ARGUMENT: Put your cursor in any of Quarks entrance fields. Hit the arrow keys: No reaction at all. You have to type in every value by hand! Hey, Quarks: Are you one beer short of a six-pack? Do you have lost your marbles? Could it be that you do not have both oars in the water? For those who still do not know Adobe products incl. ID: Here the values are changing in one-unit-steps: 1 pt, 2 pt, 3 pt, or Myriad, Myriad Pro, or 1%, 2%, 3%: scrolling through values. So simple. So natural. So self evident.
Mark F. wrote here one year ago (Dec 28th):
“The point is that Quark is too proud to realize the value of a software tool if their archenemy Adobe invents it, and rather than integrate it into their own program in order to help keep competitive, they merely stand there and ignore it, like some proud captain standing on the deck with his nose in the air while his bombed ship is SINKING!”
That’s the point, exactly that’s it. And there is a simple word for such a behaviour: stupidity, foolishness of those who are running this company. They do not know their job.
Period.
Party is over. Final stroke.
Quark has no right to survive.

by: Paul Chernoff

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:07:17 +0000

How do you work. InDeisgn is much more powerful than QuarkXPress 8 when it comes to stylesheets (paragraph, character, object) and master pages. Our editorial designers never want to see QuarkXPress again, but our ad designers prefer QuarkXPress; this may reflect differences in how they work or inertia or the fact that they have to deal with ads that come in all sorts of files and never got a chance to learn ID as well as the editorial folk.

Another issue is whether someone moving from QXP to ID is willing to learn the ID way of doing things. If you keep treating ID as if it were QXP you will be unhappy.

by: Sam

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:01:43 +0000

I’ve been working with InDesign for about 3 years starting in CS through CS3. I’ve also worked in Quark for 3 years (Quark 5-7) previous and simultaneously with InDesign. Personally, I’ve come to love InDesign.

After just starting a new job, another designer and I have an option of upgrading to Quark 8 or making the switch to InDesign CS4. The other designer has been happy using Quark for 10+ years. Here’s the question…Has anyone used Quark 8 and a recent InDesign to give a decent comparision?

by: SandorB

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:14:21 +0000

Quark got so much right, first time. InDesign users should see how quickly an experienced pro can design superb layouts, and then knock the stuff out in Quark - InDesign is cumerbsome, and doesn’t even approach Ventura from ten years ago for long docs - Creative Suite is just a racket.

by: Kurt

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:58:35 +0000

So can anyone comment the Quark 8 vs Indd CS4??

Although i enjoy better working on Indesign.. i must admit that both programs have their strenghts and weaknesses.

I know its a crazy mans wish but.. why cant they embed conversion for opposing programs?? It would make my life (and many others) so much easyer… and it wouldnt change my choice.

But its still nice to know what Im missing while using CS4.

by: Hernan

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:50:17 +0000

Ouuuh men!! thanks for let me say to the world that:

I FUCKING HATE QUARKXPRESS!!!! This stupid program SUCKSSS!! Especially the version 7 and high… and my life is a fucking nightmare because I have to work everyday with this stupid program!! it crush all the fucking time!! is someday I know a programmer of QuarkXpress I kick his ass.

by: Gifted

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:39:14 +0000

I have used both Quark and Indesign in and out of several Jobs for the last 7 odd years.

In my summary I thought Quark 6 was far to basic and dated to compete with Indesign.
Quark 7 was a vast improvement but still didn’t cut it for me with the features of Indesign.

However I have been using Quark 8 now for the last 3 weeks and have been totally bowled over by it.
The tools are on another level and bar a couple of small tweeks I would be happy to say its a far, far better product than Indesign CS3.

Stable, intuitive and actually fun to use (for a change).

by: pavlo s

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:35:19 +0000

Quark does suck… and I used to be a Quark fanboy from 1990.

I worked as a senior graphic designer at a major University. I lived and breathed Quark. We used Quark and it was fine (in the 90’s), except when something went wrong and you needed customer service… Quark service sucked big time!

Never again will I be subject to their ‘customer service’.

But let’s hope Quark doesn’t die completely: Adobe Indesign needs a bit of competition to keep them on their toes or they might become complacent like Quark did! (I hope not).

by: Normap

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:10:40 +0000

I don’t hate it, I”m getting frustrated with it. I’ve only started using this program after MANY years of not touching it. It seems pretty much the same But I am having the worst time in getting the text runaround done properly. I’m at the point now where I just can’t work with this crap and go back to Indesign!

Is there a tutorial on HOW TO DO TEXT RUNAROUND somewhere out there??

I’m getting desperate!

by: Glenboid

Thu, 29 May 2008 13:51:30 +0000

Well Quark seem to be alive and well, and still developing, Quark 8 announced today!

Looks very interesting, well worth a look… and I for one think it’s a great thing that there are 2 DTP apps out there!

Freehand is no more despite there being a huge user base!

by: ND

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:22:03 +0000

If there’s a petition, I’m in. I also think they should introduce the death sentence for any pr*ck who says that Adobe’s products are inferior just because the name Adobe means “mud hut”, or whatever. What’s wrong with these people? Have the years of using XPress left them with the intellect of a bunch of 5-year-olds?

by: Subadai

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:38:24 +0000

Im all for a petition to end Xpress right now, lets get some legistature passed to disallow the use of it.

by: Dallas of the Hill People

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:41:00 +0000

Ok, so i’ve been re-learning Quark (V 7.1 passport edition) for the last few months as i make this catalog. Here is my take on a new user’s experience with this software:

first thing i noticed, was that when i print something, it doesn’t look like it did on the screen. I don’t just mean the colors either, pictures get chopped off, characters show up out of nowhere etc.

The next i notice is that the damn thing crashes if you look at it the wrong way. i started to keep a log of the crashes and in one week i had over 70!

This is quite possibly the worst program i have ever been forced to use. Don’t buy it!

by: mjenius

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:45:21 +0000

wish I would have proof read

by: mjenius

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:40:16 +0000

We upgraded our Macs to OSX 10.5, we originally wanted to upgrade to 10.4 but we at the time Apple stopped selling Tiger. Quark told us that our version 6.5 will not get a Leopard patch, so we should get Quark 7. We need Quark because we still have some of our older stuff in Quark and since 6.5 would have issues in the new OS we sacrificed a few things to get Quark 7 it in our budget. Obviously we noticed some issues (not to say that InDesign CS3 has it’s set of issues as well). When we contacted Quark service, they really tried to help us. I must say that they have improved a lot as far as customer service goes. But here’s the weird part, at some point they said that our problem may be Leopard related and they can’t figure it out because tech support is only running Tiger!!! And this was coming from the super. Are you kidding me? Does anyone know if this is true or was this guy just trying to get rid of us?

by: Andrei

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:32:23 +0000

Let’s start a petition or something to help the damn thing die already. I have to work again (last time was in 2004) in fucking Quark. It sucks more than words can say. I swear it’s my last project in Quark. I will refuse projects in Quark even if it means I’ll lose money!!

by: Dave

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:36:36 +0000

Stick with 6.5 version … 7.0 Quark SUCKS….. takes 80 seconds to open a file? what the hell? also nothing but errors when sending files to mt Harliquin RIP!

by: Carlito

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:25:06 +0000

In my 15 + years of post-college designing, I’ve never used a slower, clunkier, more crash-prone, gimick-laden piece of software in my life. I’m equally amazed at how poorly graphics/elements from other Adobe programs translate when imported/pasted…especially from Illustrator. And last I remember, Illustrator was an Adobe product.

I don’t care how bad Quarks customer service is…I can’t remember the last time I had to call them…either way, I don’t depend on anyone’s customer service.

It seems designers got all giddy over InDesign for one main reason…it said Adobe on the box…dang followers. InDesign may have “arrived,” but in the form of a sputtering Pinto with a different name and a CD player.

-Carlito

by: Anonymous

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:29:57 +0000

we’ve been using InDesign and K4 for the past 3 years and are now looking at switching to QPS, we where promised so many things to switch and less than 30% have been delivered after 3 years, our other titles are on QPS and are producing everything quicker even there web xml feeds. InCopy and K4 are just to slow with InDesign

by: Paul Chernoff

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:43:03 +0000

>It’s just too bad it takes twice as long to produce something in ID than it does in Quark

Our experience is the opposite. Our productivity improved after moving from QXP 6.5 to ID CS2 (we are now on CS3).

by: RODIN

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:15:13 +0000

Okay. I will say this. ID is an amazing tool for designers and the publishing world alike. Very accurate, awesome previews, the whole bit.

It’s just too bad it takes twice as long to produce something in ID than it does in Quark.

And guess what? If I wanted to use Aldus PageMaker all over again I would use ID CS3.

Great program, needs an 8-core minimum with 16 gigs of RAM.

For those of you too young to know Adobe is going the way of Corel DRAW; too many features for one program to do effectively. Granted, at least in ID everything works.

Adobe should come out with its own OS…

by: Mr. I WANT MY EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS BACK!

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:57:20 +0000

boy did i get bamboozled by Quark and the apple store.

I just bought a new Intel/imac running leopard 10.5 to find out Quark 7 is the only version
that will run in leopard and the assholes at the apple store said it would run fine with a free 7.3.1 upgrade form Quark web site.

THIS IS TOTAL BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!

IT DOSE NOT RETAIN THE HIGH-RES PREVIEW SETTING!!!!

and this is a big problem designers.

I can not sit down with my client to do changes
on his 50 page catalog with over 1000 images
and have it open up with all LOW-RES crappy
looking images.. i am installing indesign now!

by: Dallas

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:25:34 +0000

Oh my god, i just started using quark again after 7 years of not using it, and amazingly, it is even worse than i remember.

I need a new job (that doesn’t require use of Quark)

by: Angela

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:56:32 +0000

I have been ID user from the beginning. It is a very good solid software. Can’t say I have had any problems. Recently I was forced to adopt Quark 7.31 it doesn’t separate files properly and it truly sucks. The support at Quark is Nil. Quark deserves to die.

by: Matt F.

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:37:42 +0000

The biggest reason I hate Quark is that they REFUSE to include the 9-point position reference grid that has always been a part of Illustrator and Indesign. I find this tool absolutely indispensable for setting the pivot point on a graphic or text box when enlarging, reducing, etc. How can anybody work without that tool???? It blows me away. I posted that question on a quark forum 2-3 years ago and nobody had a reasonable objection to my post. One user said “Useless tool—ignore this rant, Quark.” Useless my eye! Another user said “Well, I go up to this menu and choose this option and then (blah, blah, blah)…” some convoluted half-assed way of performing the same task that just didn’t cut it. The point is that Quark is too proud to realize the value of a software tool if their archenemy Adobe invents it, and rather than integrate it into their own program in order to help keep competitive, they merely stand there and ignore it, like some proud captain standing on the deck with his nose in the air while his bombed ship is SINKING! Quark is too embedded in the industry to lose its customer base anytime soon—all the major publishers probably still use it and would have to suffer a lot of time and money in order to just switch over to InDesign. And maybe it is often better in areas like monthly magazine layout files and such. But InDesign is still my choice for working with Photoshop and Illustrator on a regular basis. Quark—ugh!

by: Cyndie Shaffstall

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:46:34 +0000

Your information is woefully incorrect.

by: John Smith

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:50:43 +0000

Four Funerals and a Wedding…

A funny note from an executive insider at Quark. While employees are jumping ship left and right including Quark’s CFO, two key Marketing Directors, and even their well-loved receptionist of many years, you can still find love within the walls of Quark HQ. After a secret six month courtship, Quark Senior Marketing VP Terry Welty has proposed marriage to infamous Quarkalliance diva, Cyndie Shaffstall. Even though his divorce is still pending he announced to senior management that he’s found the woman of his dreams. It’s comforting to know that even a dysfunctional company such as Quark, love can prevail.

by: Joker

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:45:03 +0000

You might want to re-read my comment, Spagolli. I never said that InDesign CAN’T do those things, and I conceded that I’d need to learn more about it (I’d only used it sparingly when I made my original comment).
In the meantime I’ve found all the features in ID that I used in Quark, but in some cases I still find them more time-consuming than the older Quark methods.

Far from bashing ID, I admitted that it will probably become the new industry leader — I just found it to be a little ‘bloated’ with features that I found unnecessary when compared to a older, stable version of Quark.

I no longer ‘dislike’ InDesign, but I still stand by my original point — it’s a shame that Quark is no longer what it used to be.

by: Paul Chernoff

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:27:49 +0000

Uh, Paul, we use InDesign to produce a 200+ page magazine every month and we love it. We used to lay it out in QuarkXPress. I do not think my designers would switch back.

by: Mjenius

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:25:50 +0000

@ Paul,
OK, so you like Quark and that is fine by everyone. Also, you dislike InDesign and that is fine by everyone as well. But by saying that it’s almost impossible to create a 32 page magazine with InDesign you’re just discrediting yourself.

by: Paul

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:25:26 +0000

Quark is beautiful! It is so easy to create and publish. I’ve been using it since it first came around and it only gets better.
As for InDesign, I guess the folks who loved pagemaker and Illustrater might love it, but I find it to be a piece of shit.
I aint talking about doing a one page flyer but has anybody tried to create a 32 page magazine with InDesign? It’s almost impossible!