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Any Interest in eBooks on Adobe Fireworks (and other subjects)?

By on March 28, 2011 in eBooks, Learning

To this day, my tuto­r­ial on remov­ing image back­grounds non-​destructively using Adobe Fireworks is still by far the most vis­ited page on this site. I still receive email about it and ques­tions from peo­ple request­ing help with how to deal with their own images or more com­plex images than the ones the tuto­r­ial covered.

So, I’m throw­ing an idea out there : Would any­one be inter­ested in a rea­son­ably priced eBook on the sub­ject that would go much deeper into the issue and even include some video where I show some of the tech­niques live? If so, what would you con­sider a rea­son­able price?

Furthermore, if you’ve had images that gave you trou­ble and would be will­ing to share them with me (an any­one who will read the eBook), feel free to con­tact me and you can then send me the images and I will choose some to use as exam­ples. Any other feed­back on this idea you want to pro­vide is very welcome.

Other Subjects

If there’s any­thing else related to Web design, WordPress or any of the things I usu­ally dis­cuss here that you would like help with then share it in a com­ment or send a mes­sage directly to me. eBooks can cover a lot more ground eas­ier than a blog post or online tuto­r­ial so, any­thing that might ben­e­fit from an eBook treat­ment is some­thing I could write about.

Thanks!

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10 Responses to Any Interest in eBooks on Adobe Fireworks (and other subjects)?

  1. Mikko March 28, 2011 at 7:13 am #

    Ebooks for Fireworks are very rare, so there is def­i­nitely a mar­ket (I also have been think­ing of mak­ing one or two) . As an old­timer FW user, I per­son­ally dont have need for fur­ther train­ing but I would buy ebook just to sup­port the author’s effort.

    As for the con­tent, I would rec­om­mend to go with the least cov­ered sub­jects — Web Design. There are plenty of assets and arti­cles of pro­to­typ­ing and devel­op­ment, but the actual beef is still there. Ebook about how to make developer-​friendly web-​layout (with FW spe­cific work­flow) could be a hit among old and new FW users (and open-​minded PS/​AI-​users).

    Reply
    • Stéphane March 28, 2011 at 9:03 am #

      Thanks for your comment!

      Yes you are quite right that there isn’t much out there about the actual work­flow of mak­ing Web sites effi­ciently using Fireworks as the start­ing point. For that end, I could prob­a­bly reuse a cou­ple of chap­ters I had writ­ten for an unpub­lished book.

      Food for thought. Thanks again for your com­ment Mikko!

      Reply
  2. Michel March 28, 2011 at 9:17 am #

    There is def­i­nitely mar­ket for any books on Adobe Fireworks — ebooks or print!

    While there are a lot of arti­cles on the Web about Fireworks, most of them (unfor­tu­nately) are just lists (“50 awe­some exten­sions you may need in Fireworks”, “25 cool Fireworks tuto­ri­als” and so on).

    There are, of course, many authors that try to pub­lish reg­u­larly orig­i­nal con­tent about Fireworks, but I still feel there is lack of awe­some Fireworks content!

    So why not, an e-​book that may cover in-​depth one or two aspects of work­ing with Fireworks?

    About price, I’d say that “rea­son­able” is between 5 and 15 USD, but this depends on book length, of course… and many other fac­tors. I’d say, put a lower price tag = more peo­ple may buy it with­out much think­ing, and it may also reach wider audi­ence, and be more use­ful. Be sure also to release for free a sam­ple chap­ter! ;)

    Speaking of ebooks… Maybe you may dis­cuss such an idea with Smashing Mag edi­tor? (And, as a mat­ter of fact, you may also dis­cuss with him a pos­si­ble in-​depth tuto­r­ial or a set of tuto­ri­als, involv­ing Adobe Fireworks work­flows). Smashing Mag are cur­rently wish­ing to release more in-​depth articles/​tutorials about Fireworks, but there is lack of expe­ri­enced authors that are will­ing (or able) to help… So why not you? :-)

    Reply
    • Stéphane March 28, 2011 at 11:34 pm #

      Thanks for the sug­ges­tions Michel! I might con­tact Smashing if there’s a need for it but I’d like to try it out here first and see how it goes. Unless Smashing pays really well… ;)

      Any ideas on spe­cific top­ics you think should be addressed?

      Thanks again!

      Reply
      • Michel March 29, 2011 at 8:14 am #

        Smashing are pay­ing between USD 175 – 350 per arti­cle (based on arti­cle length and many other fac­tors), about pos­si­bil­ity to release an e-​book, I don’t know… Hope this helps! (Why don’t you mail them? They are really search­ing for high-​quality Fw-​related arti­cles right now!)

        Reply
  3. Peter Richardson March 28, 2011 at 11:50 am #

    Yes Stéphane, I’d be very inter­ested.
    I have lost a lit­tle faith with Fireworks, basi­cally since Adobe took it on and Alan (Musselman) left, but still own and use CS4 and Fireworks fre­quently enters into my work flow. I did spend quite some time and did learn my way around Photoshop, but I don’t like it for most things and have reverted back to FWs for all my day to day stuff and I do a con­sid­er­able amount of pho­tog­ra­phy. I have most of the FW’s books from FWs 4 with Linda’s excel­lent ‘Playing with Fire’, which I still con­sider one of the best for me, but I am dyslexic, which may account for some of my dif­fi­cul­ties with other programs.

    I am also dip­ping my toe in the water with WordPress, but I don’t find it nat­ural for me so it’s a bit of a strug­gle :-)

    Cheers

    Peter

    Reply
    • Stéphane March 29, 2011 at 12:05 am #

      Hi Peter, thanks for your comment!

      Personally, I haven’t lost faith in Fireworks itself but I did loose faith in Adobe’s desire to bring it to its full poten­tial. Maybe the next ver­sion will finally move the app for­ward but we’ll see.

      In the mean­time, Fireworks still has no equals as it is right now for Web design work. I still use it and do not intend to stop using it any time soon. As for Photoshop, as great an app as it is, I still think it’s a ter­ri­ble “design” and “lay­out” appli­ca­tion. Completely the wrong tool for that kind of job IMO (Web or print… espe­cially print).

      Linda’s “Playing with Fire” was indeed one of the best FW books ever released. My approach will be far more focused on spe­cific tasks and work­flows as they relate to cre­at­ing mod­ern Web sites.

      As for WordPress, maybe you just need to find the right tools like plu­g­ins and themes, espe­cially the right theme frame­work. I will post about all that soon too because it’s now been about a year since I started doing client projects with WordPress and I would not go back. I can now con­cen­trate on cre­at­ing the right user expe­ri­ence and solv­ing my clients’ needs and not recod­ing the same stuff time and time again. It’s very lib­er­at­ing. A strong CSS knowl­edge is manda­tory though IMO. With the right theme frame­work, that will help you more than know­ing PHP but that comes very handy as well.

      Check out the Headway Theme frame­work if you are seri­ous about inte­grat­ing WordPress into your work­flow. WordPress with Headway have rocked my site design and devel­op­ment process. If you decide to pur­chase it, I’d appre­ci­ate if you used my my affil­i­ate link (either through the ban­ner on the right or the link in this paragraph).

      To con­clude, is there any spe­cific topic (Fireworks, WordPress or other) you think would be ben­e­fi­cial to cover?

      Thanks again!

      Reply
  4. Laurence Elsdon March 28, 2011 at 3:56 pm #

    I do a lot of web design, and I find Fireworks the best tool to use, but a lot of peo­ple I talk to are just unwill­ing to ven­ture into it. So it’d be great to have a high qual­ity resource for Fireworks to prove its authen­tic­ity as a design app.

    Reply
    • Stéphane March 29, 2011 at 12:28 am #

      Thanks for the com­ment Laurence!

      To prove it how? Many peo­ple are not will­ing to lis­ten even to rea­soned argu­ments. They use what’s famil­iar to them and are unwill­ing to change and maybe improve their work­flow because they do not see it as prob­lem­atic in the first place. And, quite frankly, who am I or any­one else to tell them oth­er­wise? I have already made the case for Fireworks here (that is the sec­ond most vis­ited page on this site) and count­less times in the past in forums and other venues. I’ll leave that to oth­ers now as this is of absolutely no inter­est to me any­more. Being a Fireworks evan­ge­list has con­sumed a lot of my time in the past for very lit­tle reward. I’m done. What I’m inter­ested in at this time is pro­vide use­ful tips and shar­ing key parts of my Web design work­flow with peo­ple that are inter­ested in pos­si­bly learn­ing new things. That includes Fireworks of course but there’s much more to it than Fireworks and I want to place it in con­text of the entire process. I spend a lot more time in Dreamweaver, the WordPress admin and the Headway UI than in Fireworks nowa­days. Fireworks is still an essen­tial part of my toolset but it’s no longer the cen­ter of it.

      I do want to start with Fireworks related mate­r­ial for my eBooks though because I’ve been using it for so long (+12 years) and I want to share how my usage of it has evolved.

      So, I’ll ask you what I asked the oth­ers: Is there any spe­cific top­ics (related to Fireworks or not) that you believe would be par­tic­u­larly use­ful to you or other people?

      Thanks again!

      Reply
      • Michel March 29, 2011 at 8:17 am #

        Web design work­flows with Fireworks sounds like one of the best pos­si­ble top­ics… :)

        But feel free to choose your own topic — why not?

        Reply

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