THE FIRST VERSIONS OF QUARKXPRESS gave designers and page layout artists a whole new way to do their work. This new way was better and faster—but for folks who were used to doing pasteup on a light table, it took a little bit of getting used to. So, fittingly, early QuarkXPress books concentrated on helping people who were used to thinking in terms of galleys and X-ACTO knives to learn their way around a GUI.

Today’s designers and page layout artists, however, are quite familiar with the mechanics of digital page layout, thank you very much. The meat-and-potatoes features have been there for years, and they really haven’t changed all that much since they were introduced.

Until now, that is. The architects of QuarkXPress 8 have reworked the user interface with the explicit goal of making meat-and-potatoes tasks a little quicker, a little easier. Most of the old ways of doing things are still there, of course, but there are all kinds of new shortcuts and buttons—not for features you never use, but for things you do all the time. Some of the changes seem minor by themselves, but together they add up to a whole new kind of upgrade.

To go with that whole new kind of upgrade, here’s a whole new kind of book for QuarkXPress. Rather than walking you through stuff you’ve known for 10 or 20 years, Kelly Kordes Anton and John Cruise decided to help you find all the fantastic little time-savers in QuarkXPress 8 and to start using them. With this book you can take advantage of their insight and expertise—and then start taking advantage of QuarkXPress 8.

—DAN LOGAN, QUARKXPRESS PRODUCT MANAGER, QUARK, INC.