November 21 - 8:40pm EST   Que Publishing recently introduced two new books for Leopard users – "Easy Mac OS X Leopard" and "Mac OS X Leopard On Demand" – while Sams Publishing unveiled the "Mac OS X Leopard Phrasebook". "Easy Mac OS X Leopard" is written by Kate Binder, featuring fully illustrated steps with bolded and highlighted areas signifying what a user is to do to follow along with the book. "Mac OS X Leopard On Demand", by Steve Johnson, uses real world examples to provide context for the instructions it gives. The books take users through the Finder, iApps and several other programs, in addition to networking and maintenance. Both books are currently available, with "On Demand" selling ... [full story]

November 21 - 1:10pm EST   KeynotePro today released Sonoma '08, its newest set of themes for Apple's Keynote presentation software. Sonoma '08 aims to blend classic print-inspired styling with a color-neutral framework. The themes are designed to propel imagery, color and type forward while maintaining a consistent, structured feel. "The result is a theme that not only allows you to make your quick-change customizations via a palette change or placing a photo: the design actually encourages you to take that approach to another level, mixing shape-based solid color blocks or contrasting photographic palettes into a diverse array of color and texture," the company said. Sonoma '08 for Keynote is ... [full story]

November 15 - 5:50pm EST   Insider Software today released several new font auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe CS3, as well as updated XTensions for QuarkXPress 7 and Adobe CS2. The latest plug-ins aim to provide fast and accurate auto-activation for Adobe and Quark creative applications. The new software includes auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe Creative Suite 3 -- including InDesign, Illustrator, and the only auto-activation solutions available for Photoshop. The release also brings updated XTensions for QuarkXPress 6, 6.5 and 7. FontAgent Pro auto-activation plug-ins support Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger), and 10.5 (Leopard). [full story]

November 14 - 5:10pm EST   In addition to its common features, the first update to Microsoft's Office in almost four years also brings a few key additions specific to its core Excel, PowerPoint, and Word programs, some of which seem to take cues directly from developments seen in Apple's iWork suite We look at these in the second part of our Office 2008 preview. [full story]

November 13 - 5:55pm EST   In the first part of our multi-part look at Microsoft's long-awaited release of Office 2008 for Mac, we touch on the components shared across every program, including the elements gallery and its related components, SmartArt, and themes. We also examine the two programs built to serve as the cornerstones of the new productivity suite: Entourage, the e-mail and project manager, and My Day, Microsoft's new scheduilng tool. [full story]

November 12 - 4:55pm EST  GLUON today delivered two new plugins for InDesign CS2/CS3 users. The company has released a version of ColorBreaker that works with InDesign, the company's automated color mark-up that was originally released for QuarkXPress nearly 10 years ago. ColorBreaker quickly analyzes a document and places easy-to-read tags on each item or arrows pointing from neatly arranged tags at the side. The “magic arrows” will automatically reconnect to the tag, easily customizing the look, as each tag is moved. The tags contain all the color and font usage information necessary, providing vital information to make sure that documents are set up consistently and correctly. [full story]

November 1 - 8:10pm EDT   Quark has announced that early tests reveal compatibility for QuarkXPress 7.3 with Leopard. There is one exception, however: the Flash export in Quark Interactive Designer. Quark spokesperson Sarah Rector told MacNN "We chose to focus on optimizing the latest version of QuarkXPress because it offers our customers the greatest value, features and benefits. We plan on releasing a QuarkXPress 7 update with fully tested Leopard support within the next few weeks." Quark says the new release will be a free update for existing QuarkXPress 7 users and will be available to download from the Quark Web site. Of important note is that QuarkXPress 6.5 is not compatible with Leopard. [full story]

October 23 - 10:35am EDT   SmileOnMyMac has released an upgrade to PageSender, its Mac-based fax application. Users can send faxes and PDF e-mails directly from the Print dialog, and receive them through a fax modem; these can then be printed, e-mailed, or integrated into AppleScript. Filters sort spam by station name, and live addressing is possible with clients such as Address Book or Entourage. Version 4.1 should make the program fully compatible with Mac OS X Leopard, and has already resolved some visual bugs associated with the operating system. Printing speed and reliability has been improved, and a bug in cover page field substitution has been eliminated. PageSender requires Mac OS X ... [full story]

October 16 - 2:15am EDT   DTP Tools has released new Layer Comps plug-in for InDesign CS-CS3. Layer Comps provides a way to store a snapshot of certain key aspects of your documents layers. It allows you to store your current view of layer visibility and editing state as a Layer Comp. You can unlimited snapshots, without substantially expanding your file size. Comps can be exported into all formats supported by InDesign. You can export a single comp into .inx as a snapshot or multiple comps into .pdf. All documents created with the Layer Comps can still be opened and edited without this plug-in. The layer settings will remain the same. The tool is priced at $30. [full story]

October 10 - 2:35pm EDT   Canto and Quark on Wednesday announced an integration between the Canto Cumulus digital asset management system and the newly announced Quark Publishing System 7 (announced earlier this week). QPS 7 work groups can use XMP and IPTC legacy and core metadata searches to find any image, text element or other asset as well as search the full text contents of documents created in QuarkXPress, QuarkCopyDesk and Microsoft Word. Canto's Cumulus provides QPS 7 work groups a central repository from which to access and store assets using check-in/out, version control, and a web-based "portal" view. [full story]

October 8 - 10:40pm EDT   Quark on Monday announced the launch of Quark Publishing System 7 (QPS 7), its next-generation collaborative workflow system. Designed with a new open, standards-based architecture, QPS 7 integrates with existing business systems and a variety of publishing solutions to help simplify editorial, creative and production processes. QPS 7, announced at the ifraExpo and conference in Vienna, brings support for QuarkXPress 7 and QuarkCopyDesk 7 using a re-engineered Java-based core. It features an updated roles-based user interface that simplifies daily tasks; brings certification with HSQL and Microsoft SQL; delivers advanced Web-based editing features; offers more export options ... [full story]

September 20 - 10:05am EDT   Quark is preparing to announce the latest revision of its Quark Publishing System (QPS 7) at IfraExpo and Conference in Vienna. The event, which is scheduled to run from October 8-11, will set the stage for Quark to demonstrate its collaborative workflow system designed for newspapers as well as major corporate publishers, according to Macworld UK. The forthcoming QPS revision enables users to simplify the editorial and creative processes by connecting people as well as tasks in a virtual workplace, and includes a slew of new features. QPS 7 adds support for QuarkXPress 7 as well as QuarkCopyDesk 7, and is reworked to utilize open standard technologies like Java and Service ... [full story]

September 13 - 5:45pm EDT   NiXPS today released NiXPS 1.5, enabling Mac users to view and work with Microsoft XPS files. The Redmond-based company released XPS as its own alternative to digital documents to compete with Adobe's PDF format. NiXPS 1.5 allows Mac users to view XPS files and is built on its core NiXPS library -- which is available to developers -- which offers a wide range of XPS editing and rendering functionality. Users can add and extract pages or merge entire documents with the new software, and the latest release allows Mac users to export XPS documents to Adobe's PDF format. NiXPS 1.5 is priced at $300, with upgrades available for free to NiXPS 1.0 users. [full story]

September 13 - 11:10am EDT   As promised, Recosoft has launched the first version of PDF2ID, a document conversion tool. It operates as a plug-in for Adobe's InDesign CS2 and CS3, importing PDF files while retaining their correct layout; it reforms elements such as paragraphs and images, and can also regroup elements, apply styles, and reproduce aspects such as tables and annotations. Users can further specify which elements they want, so that only text is carried over, or just images and annotations. The software is optimized for multi-core processors to avoid bogging down on newer Macs. PDF2ID for Mac OS X costs $250. [full story]

September 11 - 10:00am EDT   Quark has announced that its Print Collection suite has now gained extra file support, in the form of Adobe Acrobat 8. Print Collection is a series of tools for the prepress and imposition processes, mainly used in tandem with QuarkXPress 7; the only program with support for Acrobat is Quark Imposer, which allows customization of sheet, imposition and binding types, along with aids such as imposing PDFs from multiple sources into a single printer's spread. A copy of Print Collection is $300, but can be installed on several workstations without penalty. [full story]