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Fireworks MX Question

wsteineker

wsteineker

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 17, 2001
727
0
Montgomery, AL
I was wondering if any of you use Macromedia Fireworks MX. I've just started freelancing as a web designer, and I find that I'm looking for something a little more webfocused than Photoshop for producing my buttons and original graphics. Do those of you who use the program find that it was a smart purchase? Does it help you achieve higher quality and productivity? What are your overall impressions of the product? Thanks in advance for your input!
 
I like Fireworks really well, ( talking of the pc version but they are 99% equal. ) It s an incredibly powerful programm, and it helps alot when you are trying to do more or less nice graphic orientated websites.
It s really worth its price, ( at least for me ).
Unfortunatly, it takes you a little longer than with dreamweaver to learn it, and quite really long ( 2 weeks or so ) untill you know all the possibilities the programm has got.
 
As with any professional-oriented program, it takes a while to learn all of the features, but for basic button and graphic design, you should be up and running within a day or so. The hardest part for me was "unlearning" my Photoshop habits.

VTC Online (www.vtc.com) offers Fireworks tutorials. You can watch the first 10 or so lessons for free over the web. It will give you a decent overview of the interface. After that, you can pay $25 per month for unlimited acess to all of their software training. (I've found it's a good way to learn the basics of unfamiliar software.)

I think Fireworks and Dreamweaver are an unbeatable combination for web design.
 
Originally posted by Flowbee
As with any professional-oriented program, it takes a while to learn all of the features, but for basic button and graphic design, you should be up and running within a day or so. The hardest part for me was "unlearning" my Photoshop habits.

VTC Online (www.vtc.com) offers Fireworks tutorials. You can watch the first 10 or so lessons for free over the web. It will give you a decent overview of the interface. After that, you can pay $25 per month for unlimited acess to all of their software training. (I've found it's a good way to learn the basics of unfamiliar software.)

I think Fireworks and Dreamweaver are an unbeatable combination for web design.
Click to expand...

So it's really that good, huh? Well that's all I wanted to hear. I can get Fireworks for $99 due to a fatty student discount, so I guess I'm off to the bookstore. Thanks!
 
Fireworks MX

I am a professional designer for an advertising agency, and after using Photoshop and Imageready for years to produce my web graphics, I made the jump about 6 months ago to Fireworks and haven't looked back. I found no problem myself adapting to the interface, but some of my peers did. I love the additional power that fireworks has in handling vector art and in the high level of intergration with the other macromedia products (which i use for my web stuff, only).

Have fun learning it, you'll probably love it.



Just an after thought: What will happen to the Macromedia products if Microsoft does infact buy the company (last I checked this hadn't happened, YET), will they get better? Worse? Will I/any of you quit using them?

ad

Additionally: it's great that they let you change and customisze your Keyboard shortcuts to match what you've grown accustom to.
 
If you get the student discount step up to studio MX. I use dreamweaver and fireworks a lot, and flash a little bit, i never use freehand, but for a 100 bucks more you get all 4.
 
I already own Dreamweaver MX, so would purchasing Studio give me two copies? If not then I think I'll look into it. Otherwise it's Fireworks only. I must admit that I'm not a huge Flash fan. I don't have a personal aversion to it, it's just that I think it's painfully overused. Still, it might be nice to have Freehand to do some vector graphics work...

I'm also really glad to hear that Fireworks is fairly easy to adapt to when coming from a Photoshop environment. The high level of integration between Macromedia's products is actually what put me on to the idea of purchasing Fireworks.

Any other input? :)
 
fireworks...yes and no...

I'm a web designer/developer and I've been using all the macromedia & adobe products for the past 3 years extensively. I will agree with most of you on the advantages of Fireworks. I use it for "mock" layouts due to it's easy slicing and ability to automatically switch from vector to bitmap mode when adjusting layers. It is also good for simple button creation and rollover effects.

However, I find it's HTML export to sometimes be more trouble than it's worth, adding alot of unecessary code. I came to the conclusion that it's still best to continue hand-coding my pages and just insert my sliced images manually. This way I can control the use of <tr>, <td>, and <table> tags and keep file sizes to a minimum.

Also note, Fireworks is integrated with Photoshop as well...something else to keep in mind.
 
your work...

let me know when you have some sites up and published with your new utilities. I always enjoy checking out new sites!....

peace,
nick
 
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