It's a different game for Quark these days. Once, its flagship QuarkXPress was far and away the leading software for professional print publishing; but its market share has eroded in recent years, faced with tough competition from upstart rival Adobe InDesign.

Quark isn't taking the challenge lying down. On Thursday it announced QuarkXPress 8, a new version that adds intriguing new features to the venerable publishing platform. The question that remains is whether this new release will be enough to push Quark back into the limelight, or whether past mistakes have cost it the crown for good.

I've given a lot of attention to the forthcoming Firefox 3.0 lately, but let's not forget that Microsoft has a new version of its own browser in the works, too. According to Nick MacKechnie, a senior technical account manager at Microsoft New Zealand, we can expect the next beta of Internet Explorer 8 to arrive in the third quarter of this year. And unlike the current test version, which is marked as a "developer preview," this version will be a public beta targeted at all consumers.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about IE8 is that it will ship with maximum standards compatibility enabled by default. Developers have been clamoring for a truly browser-independent Web for a long time. But if you're among the crowd that relies on business applications specially tailored for IE7, this sudden change of focus may not be all it's cracked up to be, since strict standards compliance could break some of your existing pages. Fortunately, MacKechnie says, Microsoft has provided an easy work-around.

As Firefox 3.0 inches ever closer to its final release, early testers seem pleased with the new features, performance enhancements, and improved look and feel of the next-generation browser. But not everyone is thrilled with how the Mozilla developers are rolling out their latest version. According to blogger Jason Clinton, the final version of Firefox 3.0 could ship with known critical bugs, at least one of which can bring Linux systems to their knees.

If you've already taken the plunge with the beta versions of Firefox yourself, you already know that not everything is yet rosy with the new browser, particularly when it comes to third-party extensions and add-ons.  But I'll argue that a few rough edges aren't reason enough to hold off on the upgrade when the final version ships.

Good news for those of you who have been following the XML office document standards battle. Microsoft today announced that Office 2007 will support ODF (Open Document Format), the document standard used by OpenOffice.org and other open source productivity suites, with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due sometime in early 2009.

Even more surprising, however, was the corollary to the announcement. While the Office programmer bees are busy buzzing away at ODF, OOXML (Office Open XML) is being put on the back burner. Don't expect Office to support a fully ISO-compliant version of OOXML until the next major release of the suite, currently codenamed Office 14, release date unknown.

If you're like me, you've been playing around with the beta releases of Firefox 3.0. The new version of the open source browser is better-looking, uses less memory, and feels snappier all around. There's just one problem: Every time they release a new beta version, some of your extensions and add-ons are bound to stop working. With the release of Firefox 3.0rc1, almost none of them work.

Fortunately, there is a solution that will "fix" all of your extensions at once. But I caution you, it's not for the weak-hearted. The fix doesn't take longer than a few seconds, but when it comes to troubleshooting your browser afterward, you'll be on your own.

For those of you who really, really love your cutting-edge Flash content, Adobe made a prerelease test version of the Flash 10 Player available today. You can download an installer for Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux from the Adobe Labs Web site.

Because this is a testing version, you're not likely to see any content that requires the new player in the wild just yet. But if you design or maintain Web pages yourself, it might be a good idea to give them a whirl with the beta player, just to make sure that all your old content still renders the way it should with the new version.

According to a press release issued by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit Tuesday, Office 2008, which debuted at this year's MacWorld Expo in January, was the biggest release of the productivity suite for the Mac platform ever. It's selling three times faster than the previous version, say Microsoft sales reps.

It wasn't all cheers for the latest version of Mac Office, however. Business users, in particular, were dismayed that Microsoft removed support for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) from the product, which meant that it couldn't run custom scripts developed for previous versions, or for Windows Office. But in a rare about-face, it seems that VBA may be returning to a future version of Mac Office -- though a precise timeline remains elusive.

I'm a confirmed Ubuntu fan, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the release of Fedora 9 this morning. Fedora is the community-maintained Linux distribution that's the foundation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the leading commercial version of the open source OS. No surprise, then, that it has a tremendous following.

You can think of Fedora as a testing-ground for RHEL; it's where you can find the latest cutting-edge features before they make their way out to the officially-supported distribution. That means it's really best suited for hobbyists, but it's also a good way to get the jump on the best that Linux has to offer.

I'm not embarrassed to admit it: I'm a big fan of Office 2007. I think Microsoft got a lot right with its latest release, starting with the ribbon interface and including any number of tweaks and improvements that make my day easier. I can't say I'm thrilled about the price of the suite, however; nor the countless SKUs to choose from. Plus, I'm also a big Linux fan. That's why I always try to keep my eye on the current state of OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite founded by Sun Microsystems.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 has just entered public beta, and it promises plenty of improvements from the previous version. Mac users, in particular, will be pleased with the new native Aqua UI. Unfortunately, however, the one feature that I was really looking forward to on the Windows side -- compatibility with the Office 2007 XML file formats -- could still clearly use a lot of work.

IT managers often assume that open source software is more secure than proprietary commercial software. Anyone who uses open source can examine the original code to spot any lurking vulnerabilities, and potentially even fix the vulnerabilities themselves. With proprietary software, you have to trust the vendor to do it all for you.

But open source's supposed security advantage assumes three things: 1.) Someone is actually looking at the code; 2.) Security vulnerabilities are getting reported and fixed; and 3.) Information about those fixes makes its way to Linux distributors and other software vendors, who apply the fixes to their products. But what those things aren't happening? As a customer, how can you be sure?

Nobody likes desktop PC security software. It's intrusive, it slows you down, and it constantly needs updating. And if you think blocking viruses and other malware is a pain on your home computer, spare a thought for the IT staff at work. When you have dozens or even hundreds of PCs to manage, security can quickly become a fulltime hassle.

Webroot claims it can help. Beginning in June, the company will offer a new service designed to ease security woes for small to midsized businesses. There are no servers to manage, no database updates to download, and no client software to install. All it takes is a simple monthly fee.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it was delaying the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 due to incompatibilities with its Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management software. Now comes word that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has also been withdrawn from automatic distribution. According to Microsoft representatives, changes introduced in Vista SP1 affect how Microsoft's SQL Server database behaves in certain situations, potentially resulting in data loss or corruption.

Microsoft has been pushing SP1 out to all Vista customers via Automatic Update since last week -- pity the unfortunate Microsoft Dynamics customers who discovered the bugs. But the bright side is that Microsoft was able to put on the brakes before the same problems started affecting XP customers, as well. That's when the real fun would have started.