Flash in InDesign? Well, kinda. Flash in QuarkXPress? Oh yeah!
IT Enquirer has an in-depth report that confirms my opinion of the Flash capabilities in QuarkXPress 7 and 8 vs. those in InDesign CS4. Here are some highlights from the executive summary:
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Indesign CS4 has Flash capabilities. QuarkXPress has had them for many years. The report examines the different approaches taken by both companies to interactive Flash file design and development and provides a detailed comparison of both products, rating them on their Flash support.
The report states that Quark and Adobe take a fundamentally different approach to Flash support. Quark’s philosophy appears to be to enable designers to do as much of the Flash work as possible with their existing tools and without needing to be developers, by integrating Flash design tools directly into QuarkXPress 8.
In contrast, Adobe’s philosophy appear to be to encourage users to do most of the interactive Flash work in a separate application i.e. Adobe Flash.
We have tested and rated both products as to their Flash functionality. We rated the products without judging vendors’ basic philosophy, but solely with respect to what InDesign and QuarkXPress let you do outside of the Flash application. The comparison between the two products shows that QuarkXPress 8 enables layout designers to go further in offering multi-media design without having to learn Flash, while InDesign adds Flash capabilities more as an add-on and not as an extra way for its layout designers to offer services beyond print publication layout.
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You can download the full report by registering at the IT Enquirer website.
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.
I am actually quite fond of both approaches. I like how ID can export everything to Flashif you want to do some heavy flash work, but I appreciate the ability of XPress to let you create simple, yet effective movies by itself. I hope that XPress will offer an export to .fla (or XFL) in the future so that you can pass off the files to a developer if need be.
And on a sidenote, Flash CS4 has gotten way easier to animate in. You no longer need a PHD to create a movie, a GED will probably suffice:)
I’m REALLY hoping Quark will find a way to export to .fla or .xfl as well. That was the first thing I thought when Adobe announced they were opening up the Flash format (kinda) with .xfl.
Anyone know if Adobe has followed through on opening up the Flash format i.e. is it just for Adobe or can anyone really create this .xfl format? I had a poke around on their site and couldn’t find anything.
As far as I know, Adobe hasn’t followed through with their promises from last spring about providing the details of the .xfl format. (I would be HAPPY to be corrected on this!).
Meanwhile, here’s a very brief and slightly disturbing definition of it:
http://www.file-extensions.org/xfl-file-extension
And here’s a brief discussion by some people who are trying to find out as well:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/477212/where-is-the-documentation-for-adobe-xfl-flash-interchange-format
If any Adobe folks are lurking out there, I’d love to hear from you…
If I upgrade form Quark 7 to 8, what flash capabilities will I NOT have that I would with the full Flash application?