Last week at the expo, Macworld attended a Quark session. The magazine fired several questions about Quark's Interactive Designer program which were fielded by vice president of desktop products Jürgen Kurz and then published in this article.

The interview revealed the following tidbits:
-Despite looking very similar to Quark's QuarkImmedia program, the company built Interactive Designer from scratch and included core technologies of QuarkXPress such as composition zones, shadows and transparencies.

-Quark Interactive Designer doesn't support old QuarkImmedia files.

-Interactive Designer is able to import SWF files from versions 6 to 9. Depending on the kind of SWF files imported, Interactive Designer may be able to control its playback functionality.

-Even though Flash currently supports more features than Quark Interactive Designer, Quark claims a more core set of functions is attractive to would-be designers. Kurz touted Interactive Designer's scripting capabilities and features exlusive to the program that Flash Professional doesn't offer.

-Interactive Designer is seamlessly integrated with QuarkXPress and can run inside the program to publish to multiple formats.

-Interactive Designer is currently able to export to Flash, which was highest on the wish list of user demands. No word is being given as to which formats future versions of the software will be able to export to.

-Interactive Designer expands beyond QuarkXPress and was designed to publish for multiple channels such as print, web and interactive output, not as an extension of QuarkXPress.

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