Save FreeHand! They call themselves FREE FreeHand, but let’s face it, when you are up against such factors as ex Macromedia and the mighty Adobe, a miraculous “save” (I guess they would settle for an effective “import”) comes to mind…
http://www.freefreehand.org/

Yes, you read it correctly. I guess there are a lot of Spaniards on their list, for last I heard, Spain was one place that would not give up their favorite vector drawing app that easily.

FlightCheck supports preflighting FreeHand 11.0 (MX) down to version 7. Although not on our short-list for other file formats to add to our new indexing, search and text extraction technology, PageZephyr, it would also make sense to be added here in the future.

Free Freehand aims actually state this VERY PROBLEM that legacy files pose and Markzware, with it’s file format conversion knowledge, often helps solve:

“We want FreeHand to have a future. Not only because we love to work with it, but also because we have thousands of files from the past we may need access to on any given occasion (well, they open in AI, but are converted into chaos).” SOURCE: http://www.freefreehand.org/index.shtml  Read more... (572 words, 1 image, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

Many of you QuarkXPress users out there may have heard of our PasteBoard XT. For those new to it, this Quark XTension, one of the oldest out there, changes the width and height of the QuarkXPress pasteboard. It allows one to adjust by value as well as by percentage, giving a wider range of options than that within the QuarkXPress application. Pasteboard costs only $29.00 and is available for Mac and runs in Quark 7 or Quark 8.

In the past, as in QuarkXPress v3.33 past, there was a version of Pasteboard XTension that was a requirement in order to work with the document. (Ask some of the older ones of us about those times!) We of course adjusted that, however you may find the need for our free XTerminator Quark XT, now called the  Kill PasteBoard XT which will remove the requirement of needing Pasteboard, for really old, almost legacy files you may come across.

Pasteboard XT Xpress 8

“It’s features like that in all their programs that make Markzware one of my favorite go-to companies for problem solving programs, Xtensions and Plug-ins.”
Here was a very nice product testimonial we got submitted through the web site last night. It was such a great Markzware customer review, that I felt obligated to share it in full…

August 27, 2009 3:17:33 AM GMT+02:00
Name: Roy Behymer
Company: IPC Graphics
Country: USA
Website: www.ipcstl.com

Testimonial:
I have used many Markzware products over the years: Flightcheck Designer; Pub2ID; Q2ID; Markztools; Pict Attributes XT; PM2Q. There’s a reason I keep coming back and why I’ve purchased and recommended so many of their products, they simply work, which helps to make my work more simple. Even as we’ve progressed from one design program to another, dropping some along the way, Markzware’s products have always helped us, no matter which professional design program we use. Even their discontinued products are still useful for us. PM2Q still allows us to extract embedded files at full resolution from legacy PageMaker files when InDesign’s built-in conversion of PageMaker results in low resolution embedded files. It’s features like that in all their programs that make Markzware one of my favorite go-to companies for problem solving programs, Xtensions and Plug-ins.  Read more... (397 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

By Chad Chelius

As an Adobe Certified Instructor and Adobe Certified Expert for Aquent Graphics Institute (AGI) Training (www.agitraining.com), I spend my days teaching folks how to use—and make the most of—creative applications, like those developed by Adobe Systems and Quark.

It is encouraging to see competition among creative applications, giving users a choice. Whether that competition is between QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign—or on the Web front, between products like Dreamweaver and Expression, or Flash and Silverlight—having a choice is a good thing for the market. It keeps the developers of those programs motivated to meet our needs. It pushes them to innovate quickly, but responsibly.

When InDesign came on the scene, it meant that graphic designers had a choice of creative applications, but also some new challenges. For new adopters of InDesign, the question became: What to do with all the legacy files that were created in QuarkXPress, or how to handle third-party contributed content that may be in the form of native Quark files?”

For Quark loyalists, the reverse was suddenly true, as well, with native InDesign files popping up in their workflow. And, for a while, there was really no real resolution or alternative than to simply rebuild files in one application or another, reassembling the document from the ground up.  Read more... (585 words, 1 image, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)

Below is a press release from IT Enquirer on a recent, detailed ROI (Return On Investment) report they did on Markzware’s Q2ID or QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign conversion plugin. As you can see in this chart, a single license of Q2ID can have a first year ROI of over 1,000 %*! That is amazing. See exhibit from IT Enquirer report here:  Read more... (447 words, 1 image, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)