QX-Tools Pro 7, US$159.95
Macintosh Only

QX-Tools Pro is one of the best-selling XTensions bundles ever. OnOne Software asked for a bit of input before they started working on this release, and they have done a great job of upgrading, updating, and revitalizing this collection, making it not only relevant to today's QuarkXPress 7 users, but also indispensable.

QX-Underline gives us old typographers (and new desktop publishers) a greater degree of control over how rules and lines interact with descenders. Rules and lines can be set to automatically skip over character descenders on lowercase letters such as g, j, p, q, and y.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to hand-work a headline and even today, in QuarkXPress 7, the native application does not allow for a high degree of control over underline styles. With this tool, there's simply no more hassle.

It has never made sense to me that could not select more than one body of text at a time. I really do like the concept of text boxes, and it is completely different than the typesetting systems of old, but once I was given an inch, I wanted the whole mile. QX-SuperSelect gives me that mile and allows for the selection of multiple words in different places in a document so that I can apply a change to all, at once.

The QX-WYSIWYG palette displays all of the document's available fonts in their own typeface — making it easier than ever before to see what the fonts will look like even before applied to selected text. I hear requests for this feature nearly every day and, while it's not one that's particularly important to me, I know there are thousands of you out there who have been waiting for this since QuarkXPress 4.

I'm only sorry it's not available for you Windows users. (Now, don't count this one into my top 7, but check out http://www.jolauterbach.com for a Windows XTensions module to handle WYSIWYG font menus.)

Another one of those nonsensical limitations: why can't I drag and drop from the finder into my QuarkXPress project? Well, now you can. QX-DragAndDrop enables the user to drag and drop images and text documents directly into a QuarkXPress 7 project from the MacOS X finder or from Adobe Bridge. Using Spotlight, find it in an instance and now that you have it, drop it into place.

QX-FindChange seems almost an afterthought when you walk through the manufacturer's web site. A single sentence is used to describe this new version of their find-and-change module, but QX-FindChange is no afterthought. This feature allows the user to queue up several find-and-change actions, reorder them, and save them for easy recall. Anyone working with a long document will recognize immediately the usefulness. You can even use the stored find-and-change tables in other documents.

All of the XTensions modules in this latest version of QX-Tools Pro 7 have been completely rewritten to take full advantage of the new palette technology in QuarkXPress 7. QX-Viewer, QX-Tips&Tricks, and QX-Shortcuts round out this new release, and you simply cannot find a better value.

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