10 years ago, if you'd asked anyone in the publishing world which software they use for DTP layout and design, chances are that the answer would have been QuarkXPress.

Nowadays, it is increasingly losing ground to Adobe's InDesign but its continued use in the professional publishing industry is testament to the power and quality of QuarkXPress.

The reason for its longevity is simply because QuarkXPress is a very powerful design and page layout software package but at the same time, retains an intuitive and versatile interface that lets you combine elegant typography with color and pictures. The end result is highly professional web and print layouts.

However, those looking for major improvements in version 9 of QuarkXPress might be disappointed. The update adds a little more power to your elbow in the form of an App Studio for mobiles and iPads allowing you to create your own interactive publications. Beyond this, many of the modifications and updates are relatively subtle, such as the possibility to export to ePUB for the eBook Market, iPad, Sony Reader and NOOK format converters plus an image grid.

Getting content into QuarkXPress had previously been one of it's major bugbears but the developers had already made it far more flexible in version 9, accepting content from products from rivals such as Adobe Bridge, iPhoto or Extensis Portfolio, allowing you to drag content from QuarkXPress to Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft Word or the desktop. Version 9 enhances this flexibility to take into account the rapidly expanding eBook and iPad market.

It's hard top sum up all of QuarkXPress's features in a few words but if you've never tried it and you're into desktop publishing, it's safe to say you won't be disappointed although you should also check out Adobe InDesign too before making any decisions.

Download QuarkXPress 9.5 in Softonic

Imagine you have several PDF documents that you want to merge into one big one. Usually, there's no easy way of doing so with Adobe Reader.

PDFMergeX on the other hand makes it extremely easy. It allows you to combine, transform and reorder PDF documents in little more than a few clicks. Using it is simple. Just browse to the PDF documents that you want to merge, order them in the sequence that you want to join them and finally click on the 'Combine' button to join them. PDFMergeX asks you where you'd like to save the final document and takes little more than a few seconds to process them.

If you're looking for anything beyond this, you'll be disappointed, however, because PDFMergeX doesn't come with any extra features or even preferences. You can, though, preview PDF pages that you've loaded and move pages into the order that you'd like to see them.

Although some users have complained of instability issues and crashes when previewing, I experienced no such problems. Just be careful when saving files to the same directory as the original documents, because it doesn't warn you if you're overwriting the original PDF with the newly merged one!

PDFMergeX is a simple and effective application that merges PDFs very well but not much more.

Download PDFMergeX 1.0.1 in Softonic

It's no secret that print newspapers are on the decline and media outlets are looking for new and creative ways to distribute themselves.

As the name suggests, The Times Reader is a desktop reading interface designed specifically for reading the New York Times. Times Reader has actually been around for over a year already but was previously based on Microsoft's Silverlight Platform. It's only now that the NYT has switched to the far superior Adobe Air platform that Times Reader looks like a genuine model of the future for all newspaper outlets.

Times Reader displays the print version of the newspaper so you're seeing pretty much what someone who's holding the real thing would. Unfortunately, unless you're a subscriber much of the content is locked but major features such as front page, videos, latest news and most emailed are available. You can scroll and move around the page using the mouse and skip through pages using the arrows. As a bonus, you can search for topics by keyword. Why this search tool doesn't extend beyond 7 days is not clear but maybe it's technical because of how large the NYT archive must be.

Although you can read all of the material in Times Reader in the online version, for a newspaper nostalgic like myself I really liked to look and feel of Times Reader. There's something slightly easier on the eye in terms of the layout, less intrusive advertising and it just feels more..."newspapery". The fact that it's updated regularly too gives it an added appeal and you can click on hyperlinks to be led onto the net edition.

Overall Times Reader is a very impressive application. You can definitely see it as a model for future readers and if you're a newspaper nostalgic, you'll certainly enjoy using it.

Download Times Reader Beta 2.0 in Softonic