Quark Inc. has released its versatile multimedia and Internet publishing solution, QuarkImmedia, to the North, Central, and South American markets. Available through Quark's direct sales and reseller channels, QuarkImmedia 1.0 lets publishers, designers, and corporate communications departments take advantage of the interactive publishing and business marketplace and retain their existing investments in QuarkXPress.

Applauding the release of QuarkImmedia, a top executive of powerhouse database developer Oracle Corp. praised the product's potential, describing QuarkImmedia as a promising component of Oracle's future publishing and communications industry strategy.

"Oracle shares Quark's vision for bringing the power of electronic publishing to the Internet, and plans to incorporate Quark technology into existing and future Oracle solutions," said Karen White, Oracle's senior vice president of strategic marketing. "Quark is clearly the leader in desktop publishing and is moving quickly to establish QuarkImmedia as the next de facto standard in high-end, professional interactive publishing."

QuarkImmedia -- for use in conjunction with QuarkXPress 3.32 or later -- combines the ease of use, design power, and precise typographic controls of QuarkXPress with the dynamic interactivity of multimedia. QuarkImmedia lets designers rely on the familiar, page-based QuarkXPress environment as they produce visual communications that include interactivity, sound, animation, and unprecedented design control. For new users, QuarkImmedia introduces the power of QuarkXPress to those who have never used the software. Together, QuarkXPress and QuarkImmedia give users the ability to simultaneously develop products for the Internet, CD-ROM, and print.

"We have designed QuarkImmedia to be an easy-to-use toolset for companies interested in multimedia and Internet design and commerce," said Susan I. Friedman, QuarkImmedia product manager. "By allowing information providers to create interactive projects -- either from scratch or from existing QuarkXPress content -- companies will be able to tap the multimedia marketplace much more productively and efficiently."

QuarkImmedia has received critical praise from leading industry publications worldwide for its ease of use and design-oriented strengths. Publish magazine said QuarkImmedia "provides the quickest route to interactive publishing," while New Media magazine wrote that QuarkImmedia is "an excellent tool for redelivering existing Quark content, and a great way to introduce layout artists to the joys of interactivity." Finally, The Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing called QuarkImmedia's typographic control "far superior" to other CD-ROM and Web authoring tools.

Quark's release of QuarkImmedia will be backed by a comprehensive educational and training effort, coordinated by QuarkAlliance and spearheaded by a new Quark evangelism department that is launching programs specifically geared to certified training centers, universities, and other important market segments. More than 25 leading Quark-certified training centers have already received QuarkImmedia training; by year-end, an additional 100 CTCs will be informed about the benefits of using QuarkImmedia for multimedia and Internet publishing.

Said Liz Brooking, vice president, strategic development at United Digital Artists, a new media training organization with offices in New York and San Francisco, "Incorporating QuarkImmedia into our custom corporate training, hands-on workshops, and multimedia certificate program is a tremendous addition -- one which our corporate customers applaud." UDA, the first company to receive certification to offer QuarkImmedia training, last month offered a two-day QuarkImmedia training class in New York that drew capacity crowds, according to Brooking.

A university "seed" program will put copies of QuarkImmedia and related training materials in the hands of selected educational institutions. Quark anticipates providing QuarkImmedia to more than 50 colleges and universities in the first 12 months following release of the product.

A program will also be geared to XTensions developers to encourage them to develop products designed to optimize and extend the versatility of QuarkImmedia.

More than 500 companies worldwide have been testing and evaluating QuarkImmedia for the past six months. A smaller group of early adopters, meanwhile, have created a variety of QuarkImmedia projects using pre-release versions of the software. Early adopter Brad Mooberry, president of Ad Dimension II in Santa Monica, Calif., hailed QuarkImmedia's features as he created an interactive multimedia presentation showcasing the Oscar-winning movie Schindler's List. "This is a single software solution," Mooberry said of QuarkImmedia.

European designers and producers have also used QuarkImmedia to create interactive projects. Nigel Kent, co-owner of The Art of Invention, a Brighton, United Kingdom-based early adopter, used QuarkImmedia to develop a Web site and to begin work on a CD-ROM about typography. "We have produced quite a number of CD projects in the past and we tend to be a bit adventurous in what we do," Kent said. "For QuarkXPress users, QuarkImmedia lets them very easily get into multimedia production, and we believe it will sell very well. We are very pleased to be able to use the product." QuarkImmedia will be released in Europe -- in nine language versions -- this fall.

Quark is taking steps to help QuarkImmedia customers widen the audience for their content through a strategic agreement with Diba Inc. Under the pact, Diba will port QuarkImmedia Viewer as part of its operating platform in a forthcoming line of low-cost interactive digital electronic appliances (IDEAs) to be marketed to consumers in the United States later this year. Diba is the first company to feature QuarkImmedia Viewer as part of its product mix. The viewer is the engine through which consumers can access interactive content created with the QuarkImmedia design tool.

QuarkImmedia has two components: a design tool that works in conjunction with QuarkXPress 3.32, and a viewer application called QuarkImmedia Viewer. QuarkImmedia Viewer is a stand-alone application that lets those who don't own QuarkXPress or QuarkImmedia view and interact with QuarkImmedia projects. It is cross-platform compatible, for Macintosh, Power Macintosh, and Windows.

QuarkImmedia Viewer also connects directly to the Internet to allow users to view projects formatted in QuarkImmedia. If users want to access a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that is in HTML format, QuarkImmedia Viewer will open standard HTML Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer.

QuarkImmedia design software is now available for Macintosh and Power Macintosh computers. A version of QuarkImmedia design software for Windows is in development.

Download the QuarkImmedia Viewer.

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