Quark & Silverlight?
Microsoft’s Silverlight is a technology sorta kinda like a cross between Adobe’s AIR and Flash technologies. (Please excuse this very rough analogy — I invite the techno-experts in the crowd to correct me if they can.)
Anyway, two project leaders from Quark’s Emerging Technologies group sat down with Microsoft’s ISV Architect Evangelist for a video interview. (In Microsoft-speak, ISV stands for Independent Software Vendor.)
This very interesting 13-minute video interview with Kapil Tundwal and Mohan Dhandapani is full of programmer terminology, and I didn’t fully understand it, but it seems to indicate that Quark is experimenting with Silverlight as a possible way to deliver high fidelity, cross-platform, interactive something-or-other. They use the term “pixel pages”. Perhaps someone can fill me in on what that means…
(I found this patent related to pixel pages, but I still don’t understand what it is.)
For more info on Silverlight see Microsoft’s page here, www.silverlight.net.
This is their definition:
“Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.”
On another page, www.microsoft.com/silverlight/default_ns.aspx, Microsoft defines it as this:
“Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.”
Whatever it is, Quark’s looking into it.
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.
Well, we know that QuarkXPress can make html’s (through export) since version 5 is released; in version 7 we can see already some Java, maybe in the future version 8 or 9 we’ll see also some Web 2.0 facilities for web designers who like to use Quark.
Amen! Heck, I’d like to see more people use the existing XML and Flash capabilities in QuarkXPress and in Quark Interactive Designer (which is now included with QuarkXPress).
Guys,
I was waiting for this to get released to lab. Check it out here: http://labs.quark.com/projectdetail.aspx?did=20
QuarkViewer is an XTensions module for QuarkXPress 7.3.x that allows users to export QuarkXPress layout pages for viewing in Microsoft Silverlight player. QuarkViewer may run as a pure desktop application or a Web application.
Our approach has been 1 click export. Behavior and user interface are pre-packaged and only relevant data (previews, vector info) is collected during export. Thus this is not meant for production workflow but another way to distrubute your artwork in a rich reading experience environment.
will be posting some samples very soon. Meanwhile please download the XTension software and provide feedback here: http://www.quark.com/service/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22264