QuarkXPress has enjoyed some 15 years of total dominance of the professional page layout software arena. However, it now looks set to become an underdog in a market which is increasingly being dominated by Adobe InDesign and the other programs that make up the Adobe Creative Suite, a software bundle which is rapidly becoming a must-have for any serious graphic design software set-up.

The huge advantage that Adobe has in this battle of the DTP giants is that most users and potential users of QuarkXPress will also be users of one or more members of the Adobe Creative Suite: Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat. Every time the question of upgrades comes around, there will always be the option, for such users, of upgrading one of their Adobe products to the Adobe Creative Suite rather than just upgrading to the latest version of QuarkXPress.

Quark's rather complacent attitude in the late nineties and early noughties contributed significantly to the shift from QuarkXPress to InDesign. For numerous years QuarkXPress dominated the market. It was the automatic choice for anyone creating publications which were to be professionally printed and there was more than a touch of complacency in their attitude. Upgrades were slow in coming and the product cost the earth.

Users of page layout programs look like being the main beneficiaries of the rivalry between InDesign and QuarkXPress. The release of upgrades to QuarkXPress has greatly accelerated in the last few years, with version 8 not far away and each release now bringing genuinely improved functionality.

Several of the new features in QuarkXPress 7 indicate that Quark are now fully awake to the threat posed by InDesign and are responding to it. QuarkXPress 7 allows the import of native Photoshop files (.psd) and has a special PSD Import palette containing options for manipulating imported Photoshop documents. Users can change the opacity and blend modes of the original Photoshop layers and work with alpha and spot colour channels.

Will these tactics be enough to guarantee the survival of QuarkXPress? Most designers and publishing professionals see Adobe Creative Suite as the future. However, QuarkXPress is used in lots of different contexts and by users with vastly differing profiles. By responding to the needs of its potential market, Quark can ensure that QuarkXPress stays alive and continues to be recognised as an excellent piece of software.