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Fireworks MX Training Solutions |
Review of Macromedia Fireworks 4
Macromedia Fireworks 4
Macromedia, Inc. Software Requirements for PC
· Windows 95/98/NT4/2000/Me Software Requirements for Mac
· Mac System 8.6 or later Estimated Street Price: $299, Upgrades $149 |
There have traditionally been two types of graphics programs on the market. Those that are vector based like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Macromedia Freehand and Xara X make up the first type. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel PHOTO-PAINT and Jasc Paint Shop Pro fall into the bitmap category and make up the second type. As the Web has evolved, each of these programs has been tweaked to be the ultimate for editing Web graphics. While each of them can bring different qualities to the table, none of them were really designed from the group up for creating Web graphics.
There is one product that really was designed from the group up with the sole purpose of creating Web graphics and we're going to explore it in this review. Macromedia Fireworks 4 is great at doing things that Web designers need to do. The sacrifice is that it isn't as strong at creating the graphics.
For users who don't have any graphics tools and they need to create solely for the Web, Fireworks is a great solution. It gives you everything you need to create attractive graphics, HTML code, JavaScript rollovers, slicing of graphics and more. Best of all, the graphics remain live at all times. So if you need to make a change to something at the last minute, no problem. A really cool feature is that Photoshop plug-ins are also live, called LiveEffects. So if you apply a filter to some text and later edit the text, the filter is automatically re-applied. Once you've created one button, it is very easy to reuse that button so that you don't have to recreate everything from scratch.
Buttons are truly buttons, you've got to define them in that matter to apply a URL. And once something is defined as a button, you can define a number of different states as shown above. What should it look like if you hover over it or click on it. And in addition to the button itself, there is a shape called the "slice" that determines how the graphic as a whole will be chopped into pieces for the Web. You can even create what is called disjointed rollovers. This means that the mouse goes over one button and another part of the graphic away from the button changes. You don't have to write code or anything to do this.
One benefit of designing in Fireworks is that a preview of the actual Web graphic is only a click away with the slice lines always being shown. You'll also find 2-Up and 4-Up views showing different quality graphics the same single click away. These previews make it very easy to tweak your graphic until it is just right. At left is an example of the 2-Up preview for a graphic.
The coolest new feature in Fireworks 4 is the ability to create pop-up menus. The idea is that when your mouse goes over a button, a menu will pop-up just like in your software. Menus can be made up of either HTML tables or a series of graphics. At right is the dialog that lets you set the formatting of the pop-up menu. They can also have submenus. Doing this without Fireworks requires extensive knowledge of JavaScript and a lot of time. This feature alone has allowed me to tell a client, "yes I can do that", instead of "hmm, let me look into it."
Once you've created the graphics, you'll no doubt want to use them in your favorite Web editor. When you export from Fireworks, you have the ability to specify how to optimize the code. Supported destinations include Adobe GoLive, Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver as shown at left. As Macromedia bundles Fireworks with Dreamweaver, they have integrated the two products so that graphics placed in Dreamweaver can be edited in Fireworks. Export a table from Fireworks, edit the table in Dreamweaver and then update it again in Fireworks. This interactivity is a great productivity boost especially in environments where multiple users are working on a common project.
When exporting, you also have a preview of the resulting graphic with lots of options. The three major Web formats of GIF, JPEG and PNG are well supported. Add in WBMP for wireless devices and TIF for other graphics programs. Each format is available in different color depths and flavors. Once a format has been chosen, further options are available as shown below. And of course you can always see a preview of the resulting graphic with the estimated size and download time shown. You can even export the graphic in Flash's SWF format, perfect for some of the animated effects.
If there is a downside to Fireworks, it is the mediocre quality of the drawing tools that are available. I find myself creating the majority of my graphics elsewhere and importing them into Fireworks for finishing. Of particular frustration is the problem I've had with getting things the exact size desired. Object size is displayed as a number of pixels, exactly as you would expect for a program specializing in Web graphics. But it seems to internally keep a decimal point or two so that two buttons that should have the same size and slightly different. I do really like the way that objects are shown in a palette so that they can be easily selected, reordered or other wise manipulated as shown at left. I would love to be able to use the CorelDRAW tools with the Web export abilities of Fireworks. But then again, I know CorelDRAW inside and out so I'm certainly biased towards its tools.
For those of you creating Web graphics, Fireworks is the best tool I've seen for optimizing graphics and adding the code for special effects. Its only weakness is the tools for drawing the graphics. Because of that, I think it is best to have another tool available to assist in creating the graphics and then use Fireworks to finish them off.
Do you have a product you would like to have reviewed? Send press releases to reviews@unleash.com.
Foster D. Coburn III has written six best-selling books on graphics software and is currently the Webmaster of the Graphics Unleashed Web site.
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CorelDRAW X6 Font List · CorelDRAW X5 Font List · CorelDRAW X4 Font List · The Terms of Adobe Photoshop and Corel PHOTO-PAINT · CorelDRAW X3 Font List · Cropping and Rotating Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · The Magic of Color Styles · CorelDRAW's Find and Replace Wizard · Shorten Your Design Time with Templates · CorelDRAW's Multi-Faceted Eyedropper Tool · CorelDRAW and Special Characters · The Easy Way to Create Calendars in CorelDRAW · The Wide World of Labels in CorelDRAW · Including Variable Data with Print Merge · Resaving, Resizing & Resampling Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Creating Your Own Fonts in CorelDRAW · The Evils of Using JPEG Files · Speeding Up CorelDRAW 11 and Windows XP · Symbols and Imposition · The Easiest Way to Recreate Logos · A Few Guidelines to Follow · Square Corners Can Be Sticky -- Rounding Corners in CorelDRAW · Creating Complex Shapes Easily with CorelDRAW · Identifying the Mystery Font · Two Ways to Create a Split Front Design · Last Word in Font Management · Calibrating Your Printed Colors with a Color Chart · Graphics Computing in 2001 · Hottest R.A.V.E. In Town · Get the Red Out of Eyes · Secrets of Color Management · Dressing Up Your PDF Files · How Adobe Acrobat Can Make Life Simpler · Why You Want PDF in Your Workflow · Converting a Scanned Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Designing 360 Degrees · Customizing Your Interface in CorelDRAW 8.0 · Fitting Text to a Path · Creating Cool Graphs Without a Spreadsheet · From CorelDRAW to Macromedia Flash, A Simple Example · Getting Rid of That Darned White Box · Converting a Bitmap Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Finding Clipart with ROMCAT
Xara Xtreme Pro 5.0
Serif WebPlus X2
Xara Web Designer 5.0
Xara Xtreme Pro 4.1
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional
Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom Digital Camera
Procreate KnockOut 2
Hemera Photo Objects Volume I and II
Wildform SWfx
Macromedia Fontographer 4.1 and FontLab 4
Caligari iSpace v1.5
Xara X
Macromedia Fireworks 4
Web Site Design Made Easy
Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000
Swish 1.51
Macromedia Flash 5
Corel KPT 6
Dreamweaver Ultradev
1st Page 2000
Adobe Illustrator 9
Corel KnockOut v1.5
Xara 3D 4
Cool 3D 3
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