Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Do I need Fireworks?

D

daver11

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 11, 2005
123
0
Phoenix, AZ
My CS3 Design Premium upgrade came with Dreamweaver and Flash. I've decided to teach myself to use these programs. (I've pre-ordered the "classroom in book" for both.)

My question is: Do I need Fireworks? Specifically what does this program do? Is it like ImageReady?

(Background: I'm an old school print designer. I've been designing with Quark-Photoshop-Illustrator for more than 15 years. For the last couple years, I've offered my customers basic web design using GoLive. I am self-taught in GoLive, and consider myself quite proficient.)
 
Looking at a few of the videos on Adobe's website, I would say it looks like they are trying to make it a website design tool.

For example, you use it to do a mock up of your website and when you have the look you want, you start exporting elements from Fireworks into Dreamweaver. It is more than just a web graphics optimisation tool though.

I would check out the videos on Adobe yourself to get a better idea of what it can do and whether you would ever want/need to use it.
 
hvfsl said:
Looking at a few of the videos on Adobe's website, I would say it looks like they are trying to make it a website design tool.
Click to expand...

They aren't trying to make it a web design tool, it IS a web design tool. And always has been. It is very powerful and versatile, and the best tool for the job. Definitely worth learning if you are serious about web design.
 
decksnap said:
They aren't trying to make it a web design tool, it IS a web design tool. And always has been. It is very powerful and versatile, and the best tool for the job. Definitely worth learning if you are serious about web design.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with this 100%

I use Fireworks to create website layouts and prepare all my graphics for web publication.

There's so much you can do with Fireworks - integration with Flash and Freehand are superb, and also it can read PSD files (effects don't port in version 8 - I'm yet to try Fireworks CS3)
 
I've found Photoshop more than sufficient -- wonderful, in fact -- for everything you need in regards to web graphics (short of animated GIFs). I've been using Photoshop for over ten years though, so maybe it really is much easier with Fireworks?

As far as career building experience goes though mastering Photoshop is far better than mastering Fireworks.
 
snakesqzns said:
I've found Photoshop more than sufficient -- wonderful, in fact -- for everything you need in regards to web graphics (short of animated GIFs). I've been using Photoshop for over ten years though, so maybe it really is much easier with Fireworks?

As far as career building experience goes though mastering Photoshop is far better than mastering Fireworks.
Click to expand...

You're better off to master them both. Again, Photoshop does a LOT of things... and is even good for web design. But, for that specific purpose, Fireworks is better.
 
Fireworks, especially in its current iteration is outstanding for creating mock-ups. Of both web sites and web applications. They've made it dead easy to transition from there to their other applications for implementation. That, along with the new pages function and links allow a fully interactive mock-up of a website. If you're working with Flex it'll also export the CSS and MXML files needed to lay everything out in Flex just as you see it in Fireworks.
 
Fireworks is more efficient at optimising images for web. I am a long time PS user but had FW8 which I never used. During the design of one my sites I used FW for image manipulation/optimisation and discovered FW to be so much better at it. Of course it's capable of doing so much more.
 
Fireworks is a sort of Raster image front-end for Flash.
It's not like Photoshop in absolute terms, and experience in Flash would actually be more useful in terms of learning the program.
 
snickelfritz said:
Fireworks is a sort of Raster image front-end for Flash.
It's not like Photoshop in absolute terms, and experience in Flash would actually be more useful in terms of learning the program.
Click to expand...

That is a strange and narrow view of Fireworks. Fireworks is simply a design environment tuned specifically for the web. One of its key features being that it is both vector and raster based.
 
It's made by macromedia, who also makes Flash.
The Macromedia Image editor that came before Fireworks (xRez) was actually a lot more like Photoshop than Fireworks is.
Fireworks is great program for web design and worthy of the time it takes to learn it, especially if you're authoring Flash sites. It is not however, intended to be a global replacement for Photoshop.
 
snickelfritz said:
It's made by macromedia, who also makes Flash.
The Macromedia Image editor that came before Fireworks (xRez) was actually a lot more like Photoshop than Fireworks is.
Fireworks is great program for web design and worthy of the time it takes to learn it, especially if you're authoring Flash sites. It is not however, intended to be a global replacement for Photoshop.
Click to expand...

Newsflash: Adobe bought Macromedia like over a year ago! They just released Adobe versions of Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks.
 
daver11 said:
Newsflash: Adobe bought Macromedia like over a year ago! They just released Adobe versions of Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks.
Click to expand...

Believe me, I'm well aware of the acquisition and current events! (I'm a long-time Freehand/GoLive user that will have to switch to Illustrator/Dreamweaver when I upgrade to Intel Mac and CS3. UGH! I'll have to completely relearn skills that have served me very well for 10 years!)

Be that as it may, my CDROM installers for Flash, Fireworks, Freehand and Dreamweaver all have macromedia logos on them. These programs are still "macromedia" apps, originally conceived to work with other macromedia apps.

In my mind, they are still "macromedia" applications that Adobe simply bought and rebranded. (with some nice improvements of course)
This is not the same thing as buying an orphan application and bringing it to mainstream status, as was the case with GoLive Cyberstudio; these apps were full-fledged mainstream workhorses for many years.

It's a little like Microsoft buying Apple, then expecting long-time Mac users to refer to OSX as Microsoft WindowsX.
 
snickelfritz said:
Believe me, I'm well aware of the acquisition and current events! (I'm a long-time Freehand/GoLive user that will have to switch to Illustrator/Dreamweaver when I upgrade to Intel Mac and CS3. UGH! I'll have to completely relearn skills that have served me very well for 10 years!)

Be that as it may, my CDROM installers for Flash, Fireworks, Freehand and Dreamweaver all have macromedia logos on them. These programs are still "macromedia" apps, originally conceived to work with other macromedia apps.

In my mind, they are still "macromedia" applications that Adobe simply bought and rebranded. (with some nice improvements of course)
This is not the same thing as buying an orphan application and bringing it to mainstream status, as was the case with GoLive Cyberstudio; these apps were full-fledged mainstream workhorses for many years.

It's a little like Microsoft buying Apple, then expecting long-time Mac users to refer to OSX as Microsoft WindowsX.
Click to expand...

I understand. I still call them MacroMind sometimes....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back