New in QuarkXPress Server 9

QuarkXPress^® Server 9 introduces hosted services, a Web-based user interface, greater design-driven automation capabilities, and support for an expanding range of digital platforms to help system integrators and applications developers create custom publishing solutions.

Hosted Service and New, Web-based User Interface

QuarkXPress Server 9 now can be run as a Windows^® or Mac* service,
which enables third-party developers to provide hosted solutions, or software-as-a-service (SaaS). Providing a hosted solution eliminates the need for on-premises hardware, which reduces the cost of implementing a high-performing publishing system.

With QuarkXPress Server 9, server administration is now entirely Web-based through a new, easy-to-use interface. The interface lets system administrators and end users easily administer their server(s) remotely from any machine. Developers and their clients no longer need to be physically at the server to set configuration options — they can simply do it from their desktop. The Web-based UI also allows them to upload templates and other documents directly, without requiring additional programming or the need for file system access to document pools for managing files.

The services used by the administrative UI are exposed to developers, so third-party developers can create custom administrative UIs specific for their use case.

QuarkXPress Server 9 works with all modern browsers (Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^® version 7 and later, Firefox, Chrome, Safari^®) and supports both HTTP and HTTPS communication.

Key Features of the Web-based UI:

• Administration -> Preferences Menu
  Allows you to set the QuarkXPress Server preferences. General preferences allow you to configure server settings, and renderer preferences allow you to specify publishing preferences.
• Status Monitor
  Allows you to see what each renderer is processing in real time (screen shot)
• Transaction Log
  Shows all recent requests to the server
• Download Logs
  Downloads all the QuarkXPress Server logs, including recent crash reports, to a .zip file that you can e-mail to Enterprise Support if they ask you for log files
• Document Pool Tab
  Allows you to manage files in the document pool

New Design-driven Automation Features

QuarkXPress Server 9 allows systems integrators to incorporate the new design-driven automation features available in QuarkXPress 9 with their automated publishing solutions, including Callouts, Conditional Styles, Bullets and Numbering, and Multi-page Tables. Designers use QuarkXPress to produce these design-driven effects, retaining control over layout and reducing the burden on third-party programmers to implement them:

• Bullets, Numbers, and Outlines
  Create dynamic ordered and un-ordered lists that are preserved and editable in QuarkXPress
• Table Spanning Across Multiple Pages
  Tables anchored in a text flow will automatically divide over multiple pages when there is insufficient space in the current box; table breaking supports repeated header and footer rows; is integrated with the table auto-fit capability; supports imported Excel tables (.XLSX); and is supported for dynamic layout in Modifier XML
• Callouts
  Boxes and groups move automatically with text
• Conditional styles
  Allows multiple style attributes to be set based on the text content, rather than “tagging”; Conditional styles can be specified on paragraph or content

Passing these automated, design-driven features on to third-party developers reduces — and can even eliminate — the programming required to achieve clients’ design-driven requirements, which vastly reduces the time and cost typically required to deliver these capabilities.

Support for More Platforms - Digital Publishing

QuarkXPress Server 9 supports an increasing range of environments including:

• iOS (Objective-C ARM)
• Windows, Windows Mobile, Silverlight™ (.Net)
• Android, cross platform (Java)
• Blackberry^®, Flash^® (WSDL doc-literal SOAP services)
• Mac OS^® (Cocoa, Objective-C i386)

This means developers can create customised solutions that deliver richly designed material to a broad number of digital/mobile devices.

*QuarkXPress Server 9 can be run as a Mac service starting with QuarkXPress Server 9.01.