CCV Software - Serving education since 1982 | IT Enquirer report compares productivity, creativity, and efficiency in QuarkXPress and InDesign

IT Enquirer report compares productivity, creativity, and efficiency in QuarkXPress and InDesign

mary | 18 February, 2008 10:33

IT-Enquirer wrote a 34-pages analysis comparing the most important functionality aimed at productivity, creativity, and efficiency in QuarkXPress 7 and Adobe InDesign CS3 . The analysis consists of timing results measured for identical tasks performed in each application and of a qualitative assessment of features that can’t be measured in time.

In particular, we tested tasks and challenges in the following application areas:
- Document, setup, collaboration and design consistency
- Working with layouts
- Printing and output
- Miscellaneous other tasks

The table at the end of this summary lists the results. We found QuarkXPress 7 to be faster in 79% of the tasks; InDesign CS3 was faster in 21% of the tasks. However, the degree to which the tasks were faster in either application varied and might not always be relevant to the user.For example, most users won’t notice if a task takes 9 vs. 11 seconds, even though that is 18% faster. However, if that is a task that in their particular workflow they perform all the time, the 2 seconds delay in one application does matter. Where appropriate we will highlight in the report which task matters most for which type of use case.

We found that QuarkXPress 7 has better support for design departments where more than one person must be able to control and manage the layout process by offering support for Job Jackets, Composition Zones and sharing colour management elements. In many areas, QuarkXPress 7 also is just faster, supporting the creative process better by including –right within the application– Web and Flash layouts, and the most often needed creative tools and effects.

InDesign CS3 is faster and offers better support in the areas of table styling, XML, and Object Styles. The automation of long-document functionality like automatic running headings, run-in headers and nested styles are other examples of where InDesign CS3 is better.

In the qualitative domain, we found users can perform many tasks without opening extra palettes using QuarkXPress 7’s measuring palette. QuarkXPress 7 offers the designer a large number of graphic tools and effects, but some of these are not as obvious as they could be in the interface. On the negative side, the XPert Tools Pro XTensions set in QuarkXPress 7 has palettes that do not integrate well visually with the other interface elements in the program.

InDesign CS3 has a more aesthetically pleasing interface and a more obvious access to its graphic tools and effects. On the negative side, the creative tools in InDesign CS3 are often implemented as a link to the external applications in the Creative Suite.

In some other areas of InDesign CS3 we were surprised to find that the program isn’t up to the requirements of professional prepress users. The Pantone colour library problem, covered in the chapter on colour management comes to mind.