Now is a Good Time to be a Fireworks EvangelistI could not imagine my creative process without Adobe Fireworks. I have been using that application since version 2.0 sometime in 1999. 10 years ago, Fireworks was not an obvious choice but the workflow advantages over Photoshop were immediately evident to me and my creative process never was the same. Unfortunately, it took almost all those years for Fireworks to be taken seriously in the industry. Being a Fireworks evangelist 5 or 6 years ago felt like preaching in the desert. But not anymore. Today, Fireworks is finally thriving. After a couple false starts and dud versions (yes I'm looking at you Fireworks 8 and CS2!), versions CS3 and CS4 have finally brought Fireworks to a level where many industry heavyweights are now paying attention. It is also crossing over into new fields like User Experience and Interaction Design where many practitioners who are not traditional Web designers (read visual/graphic designers) use Fireworks for rapid prototyping and quickly iterating interface and interaction designs. It is an exciting time for Fireworks which proves that Adobe's decision to keep it alive after acquiring Macromedia was the right one. Not only that but the application itself has finally started to really improve again after stagnating for a few years under Macromedia's watch. There are new books being written about it or with chapters about it, new (and not so new) Web sites covering how to use it or who is using it. Can't wait to see what's in store in Fireworks' future. If you have never tried it, do yourself a favor and do so. If you are coming from Photoshop, leave your pixel pushing Photoshop mindset at the door and embrace Fireworks vector based workflow. Regardless of Fireworks' very capable bitmap editing tools, its real strength lies in its hybrid workflow based on a vector based core. Until you really give it a try, you will never know how much difference working in a vector based environment does for any kind of layout work. |
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Fireworks is great for everything from U.I. wire frames to visual designs. If you haven't tried it yet I would go and download a demo.
--Tom
also can check out..
http://fireworksdesigner.com/?p=109
I am happy to see you so optimistic about Fireworks. I've learned recently in the forum that it seems that Fireworks is not a vector based core application but more bitmap like Photoshop.
I had a conversation with Arun concerning the blurry aspect of fonts in Fireworks (compare to Illustrator and even Photoshop) and he replied:
"Fireworks is totally a bitmap based application meaning, what you see on the screen is what you get even if you export it as gif/jpg/png. Whereas Illustrator is vector based application, thus you see that smoothness in everything it renders on canvas. You wont get what you see always there, when exported.
Fireworks is more closer to Photoshop and even there if you zoom in to 400% as you have mentioned in your sample .png file, you will see the same pixels."
What do you make of this?
He's talking about rendering as I suspected. Fireworks is at its core a vector application with some bitmap tools. It is a hybrid. Yes, its rendering is "pixelyzed" (no pun intended) but you still manipulate and edit vector objects (if you work with the vector tools of course). Photoshop's vector features are "tacked on" over its purely raster engine. Smart Objects and the ability to create and edit vector paths change nothing. You cannot simply select a shape with the arrow tool for example and change its stroke color, weight or its fill color like in Fireworks (or Illustrator, InDesign, FreeHand, etc). That's the efficiency of a vector application.
@Jean-Claude
Fireworks in a way is like InDesign for the Web but with real bitmap/pixel editing tools too. But its vector nature make it a much more efficient design and layout tool than Photoshop on its own has ever been. If you have any questions when you get to use it, don't hesitate to ask!
There are tons of PS tutorials, but im pretty sure that there will be lot of good FW tutorials. Well least im going to deliver FW tutorials to the world much as i can :)
My website Fireworks Zone is dedicated to Fireworks and you can check my tutorials, articles and tips. Where can we read your tutorials anyway?
Adobe.com and adobe TVhave some excellent tutorials on Fireworks, and I've written many FW-based tutorials for Communitymx.com. There's lots out there. :-)
In your opinion, which CS4 product is best-suited to everyday webpage composition -- as in, combining the graphic elements together into a single page that will eventually become an HTML/CSS webpage?
I see a lot of overlap between Ps and Fw, and would just like to know which one is considered best practice for designing a full page (as opposed to an individual element or a prototype).
Now, especially after the much-needed 10.0.3 update was released (for CS4), things have improved, and a lot!
I expect Adobe to promote Fireworks better, and I also expect version CS5, when it comes out, to be one of the best Fw versions, ever!
Fireworks is an important part of my workflow, too. I cannot imagine my everyday design work without it...
Remembering to convert to CMYK in Illustrator is the last step.
Voila print ready vector graphics created with the ease of Fireworks.