[andrewparker]

Just a pointer to a great deal on cancom. They have overstocked on Macromedia Fireworks MX and are selling it for £70, RRP £280!

If you're interested go to the "Falling price auctions" section.

[oli]

blimey that is some reduction!

[Martin]

Well worth the money, great tool, great bargain.

[dorian]

personally i think fireworks sucks... but that's just me...

[Mr Fred]

no - i agree fireworks is poor

[oli]

Never used it personally, for £70 tho you cant complain.
Good for those users who cant afford Photoshop.

[greenfruit]

i prefer fireworks for web stuff (buttons, nav bars etc) over photoshop. Maybe ive been using photoshop for images too long and got stuck in my ways, but it just doesnt seem right to do a button in photoshop.

[sleepingfish]

I like fireworks, it has its place, even if it is a cross between Imageready, illustrator and various other apps and does create some dodgy code - I'm not really selling it here am i? It's not for everyone - but at £70 you can't go wrong

[andrewparker]

I don't really want to get into the "Fireworks vs Photoshop" debate but Fireworks has its place. As a tool for creating web graphics it is better than PS for (like Greenfruit said) buttons etc. There seems to be some myth that Photoshop makes you a better designer. That is complete bollocks.

Fireworks is also far better than PS at compressing images.

[oli]

Yeah, that debate is boring - all apps have their place.
I do agree tho that Photoshop is a bit crap at optimising images , even paintshop pro is better.

[greenfruit]

one of my main hates about PS at the moment is the size of jpeg files; you have to do the export for web to reduce the size by about half. If you just 'save as' a jpeg, it puts meta data in the file which makes it about twice the size of a plain jpeg (as i said). Why theres not a simple check box to 'ignore meta data' in the save as dialog i dont know.

[dorian]

[quote:94d723fa5d="greenfruit"]one of my main hates about PS at the moment is the size of jpeg files; you have to do the export for web to reduce the size by about half. If you just 'save as' a jpeg, it puts meta data in the file which makes it about twice the size of a plain jpeg (as i said). Why theres not a simple check box to 'ignore meta data' in the save as dialog i dont know.[/quote:94d723fa5d]

i just do 'save for web' as a habit and I sleep well at night
but I agree ImageReady is junk... Dont understand people that use the slicing tool either.... (in [i:94d723fa5d]any[/i:94d723fa5d] program) but that's me again... I'm Dorian...

[lucidcreations]

I know this sounds like a stupid question but I've been using fireworks to produce beizer (sp? aka pen tool) drawings for ages because it seems that little bit more controllable than PS. Do most people here use Illustrator for this? I seem to have been able to do everything i ever needed over the years cuttings and pasting between both. Is there something I'm missing with Illustrator what do you guys use it for? Is it worth getting?

[Narate]

lol I agree whoooole heartedley with you Dorian I have never needed to use Fireworks for anything.

As for Image ready, it can be nifty for Gif images, but thats about it.

.ps I hate Illustrator, always have always will.

[dan]

I'd be lost without illustrator... I do all of my layouts in illustrator (print ones go into Quark or InDesign though I'm using the later as much as I can recently), I just find it easier to manipulate my designs that way + it's great for scalability when you have to make up large presentaion boards for clients etc.

Using my designs on the web is a case of exporting, drag and drop or just opening the .ai files in photoshop for a final tweek.

Used to use fireworks a lot but not opened it for a while.