Document Previewing Technology for QuarkXPress Projects

Now supports QuarkXPress 8 and legacy documents.

Quick Look is the file previewing technology built into Mac OS® X 10.5 (Leopard). It allows you to view files right in the Finder without actually opening them, and it even provides large previews for the neat cover flow feature that the Finder inherited from iTunes in Leopard.

For native application files like QuarkXPress® projects to display in Quick Look, you need to install a Quick Look filter that can render the file or extract previews from it.

Creating a Quick Look filter that dynamically renders the native object model inside a QuarkXPress project would be a bigger project than we're capable of tacking at the moment, so we took a simpler approach for the meantime. First we increased the size of our embedded previews in QuarkXPress 7.31 (the same preview we've always saved into QuarkXPress files—the one controlled by the Include Preview checkbox in Quark's Save As dialog). Then my colleague Luis wrote this Quick Look filter that will extract the embedded preview. This approach has some limitations, such as:

• The previews are resolution-dependent and will look somewhat pixilated at large magnification
• Only the first spread of a project is previewed
• When viewing projects saved by versions of QuarkXPress before 7.31, it will extract the old smaller preview and will definitely look funky when scaled big, such as in full screen mode

Still... the previews saved by 7.31 look pretty good in cover flow mode and I think you'll agree this filter is a big step forward for browsing QuarkXPress files in the Finder.

In the future we'll investigate enhancements to the filter allowing it to dynamically render the document at any size. For now, take a look and email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , product manager of QuarkXPress, with your feedback.

Installing Quick Look filter:

Drop decompressed QuarkXPress.qlgenerator file into your Library -> QuickLook folder. Restart your Mac.

To download this software, you must click here to accept the Quark labs EULA.