While reading “WoodWing enters the Web-to-Print Market with the announcement of Brand Station” it hit me that the graphic media world is doing everything it can to try and not preflight their documents. Now of course, I understand the use of such a product like Brand Station, after all, Markzware has dipped its toes in this marketplace in the past with FlightCheck Online and FlightCheck Workflow and certain solutions based on these, could make the document management much easier and more efficient. Here we can read more about this interesting Internet based solution from WoodWing, long know for their InDesign editorial system:

The Web-to-Print process involves a brand owner, designers and brand users. Designers create templates according to the corporate identity. The brand owner approves the templates and provides them via the Web to a controlled group of brand users (e.g. the subsidiaries). These users can access the templates through their Web browser and generate high-quality, print-ready files without needing an in-depth knowledge of print production. Brand users cannot change the design; they can only customize the templates with their own information. A brand owner can request an optional approval step for every document. Finally, Brand Station delivers the print-ready files to the brand user in various file formats, including JPG, PDF or EPS; more formats can be added easily.
Source: http://www.quickprinting.com/  Read more... (262 words, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)

Doug Rosen, product manager for Markzware recently made a nice little product overview movie for our tools which specifically work with QuarkXPress. You can watch the neat little movie, made in Apple KeyNote and finalized in iMovie here:

These products include;

ID2Q or InDesign to QuarkXPress conversion
MarkzTools, which fixes bad or corrupted Quark Projects
and
FlightCheck Professional- your preflight tool for checking some 50 file formats such as QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and PDF to name a few!

Preflight, in the graphic arts sense, is the process of checking a digital document before it goes to plate, print or otherwise output (exported – such as to PDF). It traditionally is a way to check quality before going to the printing press, digital or otherwise, but can also be used to check online banners and gifs. Preflight is best done on the source document, such as those created in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress or Corel!Draw as some examples, before becoming a PDF (Portable Document Format). Similar to a pilot whom walks around and performs a pre take-off pre-flight check, preflighting for designers and prepress operators should be a must.

The term preflight was first used during a presentation in 1990 by Chuck Weger, a well know industry consultant. There were some early on postscript (rips) that interperted data and provided a preflight report of sorts. However the first true preflight application came from Markzware and was wisely called FlightCheck another term pilots also use.

Even before FlightCheck® was out on the market, Markzware applied for and was dully granted a U.S. Patent Number 5,963,641 – ‘Device and method for examining, verifying, correcting and approving electronic documents prior to printing, transmission or recording.’  Read more... (508 words, 1 image, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)