[Snowshiro]

Absolutely nothing? (say it again...)

Well anyway, lame Edwin Starr references aside (I've actually seen him perform live believe it or not), if you've seen my posts in another thread you'll know that I've just taken delivery of CS3 Web Premium.

Which leads to my burning question. Having previously owned various versions of Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver, this is the first time I've splashed out on the entire suite. So, consequently I've never owned a copy of Fireworks. I seem to vaguely remember working with an early copy of it in a design studio back in the late 90s, and it seemed to largely be used for image optimization and animated GIFs back then. But given that it's made it this far, there must be a good use for it. From briefly reading the docs, it seems consist mainly of bits of functionality which other apps already have.

So... Do any of you actually use Fireworks? What are it's main strengths? What jobs does it do, that speed up your workflow tremendously and make your job so much easier than it would be without it. I'm all ears (or in this case, eyes).

[another™]

it has replaced Image Ready.

[lmclaney]

I use Fireworks a lot. I use it for quite a lot of things from laying out web designs, creating vector images such as logos and vector art. I have even used it a few times for some print work. I find Fireworks very easy to use as the controls are very simple and you can apply various filters and effects to elements very easily. For a project I would normaly use Illustrator to create the outline of the image, then use fireworks to colour the image and add any basic effects and then use Photoshop to add any fancy effects. I would then put it all into fireworks to rearrange the elements and to optimize the image for various outputs such as print and the web. I would never use fireworks for actually creating a site like some people do as it creates awful code, I just use it to arrange page layouts etc and then optimise these elements (such as the header) for use on the web.

[Mattoman]

I only used to use it because i preferred its magic wand tool. but photoshops is just as good now.

[Snowshiro]

I'm still left wondering what the point of it is. It seems to be a bit of Photoshop, a bit of Illustrator, a bit of Dreamweaver etc.. bolted together, but doesn't really have a role of its own.

[samuelcotterall]

That's all we had at uni, and I used it for all of three minutes. Coming from an Adobe background I'm not used to the way Macromedia apps work, and found it really irritating.

I was talking to one of my lecturers who'd just bought the CS3 Master Edition (or whatever it is called) and I said "Yeah, I bought Design Premium" and he went crazy saying it was useless because it didn't have Fireworks. I just know he's never going to open Illustrator.

[Snowshiro]

Well after having Fireworks for about a month, the only use I've found for it is batch processing (mainly for making thumbnails of larger images). I'm aware that you can do batch processing using Photoshop's recording ability but the method in Fireworks is pretty quick and simple. I'm told that you can now also do it in Bridge, but I hardly use Bridge at all.

[weldo]

batch processing and animated gifs ...

[fivel]

i use fireworks all of my web interfaces designs.. and it's been four years then. All my clients says , "Wow, you can do that in Fireworks?"

I doesn't really matter what software you use but how you use it!

It's really both vector and bitmap which makes it very good in Web interfaces... well, it's the best for that job! Cause it is made for web. Not to mention that it's compression is quite remarkable.

[Catnip]

We use it to create web based navigation panels as it has a great button interface, also it's very precise on a pixel to pixel basis.

You can also design full page pages in it with fancy navigation and export it via html into Dreamweaver, when you need to make changes you click the fireworkd edit button in Dreamweaver and it takes you back to fireworks to edit the graphic...then you click 'done' and it takes you back....really simple!

I could not live without it!

Hope that has helped answer some of your issues.

[Lotricthus]

I use it for everything graphic oriented, because I can't afford photoshop.

Thats a good use.

[freelancr]

Fireworks is annoying because it uses a customised PNG format. As I understand it, PNG does not support layers, but a Fireworks PNG does. So if you created a layered image in Fireworks, only Fireworks will be able to open it with layers, other programs will only be able to open it as a flat image.

Just worked on something with another designer. They created a website design in Fireworks, and since I use The GIMP, I could only open it as a flat image. Pain in the arse to get sorted out. The designer tried saving as a .psd, but Fireworks fucked that up too. In the end they had to save anything that needed to be separated as individual images on a transparent background.

So, in conclusion, I fucking hate fireworks. If you can't afford photoshop, use The GIMP.

[mocremilo]

I don't have much experience with Fireworks, but it seems to be an attempt at an all-in-one solution. I don't really like it. I think some functionality and quality is sacrificed by the attempt to do "everything."

It does make some pretty nice drop down navigation menus though. Personally, I'll stick to Photoshop and Illustrator.

[proc355]

It pretty much had it's day in the "400 image tabled layout" era; that said the optimisation was superior, although I would hope that after the acquisition Adobe has integrated whatever magic it had into the "save for web" functionality of the other applications.

Nobody has mentioned the glaring non-upgrade of the UI to bring it in line with the rest of the suite... not sure if that's an indication of it's future or just indicative of launch deadline constraints.

[focused]

Originally Posted by proc355

It pretty much had it's day in the "400 image tabled layout" era; that said the optimisation was superior, although I would hope that after the acquisition Adobe has integrated whatever magic it had into the "save for web" functionality of the other applications.

Nobody has mentioned the glaring non-upgrade of the UI to bring it in line with the rest of the suite... not sure if that's an indication of it's future or just indicative of launch deadline constraints.

Dreamweaver also got that same treatment. It doesn't look THAT BAD, but I think they focused on the biggest players for the new UI (Photoshop, Illustrator...). If you look at software suites like Microsoft 2007, they said somthing similar. They put the new UI on the power players like Word, Excel, and some of them didn't get it, like OneNote and PowerPoint I believe.

Anyways..... Fireworks is good for fast prototyping, as it SPECIALIZES in web desgin, where as Photoshop and Illustrator are designed for photos and art work respectively. I think the property inspector is one of the best features, something Photoshop and Illustrator don't quite do as well. Fireworks is precise, and it allows you to position on x y cordinates, and also specify pixel dimensions QUICKLY, and change that on the fly, whereas in Photoshop, if you want to be pixel precise, you have to go into custom shapes.... and specify a fixed size... which automatically applies to any shapes you make after it unless you change it..... and if you want to position something you have to try to eyeball it.... or use the guides which aren't that precise and sometimes graphics will snap to the guides even though you don't want them to.....

Not so with Fireworks. Also You have to love 9 slice scaling in Fireworks. Let's see what else do I like about Fireworks...... Round trip editing with Dreamweaver (don't know if Photoshop supports that)...

All around, Fireworks is DESIGNED for the web. Whatever kind of "DESIGN" you could accomplish with Photoshop, you could probably do twice as fast with Fireworks, it's just very precise. Me personally, I make graphics with Illustrator, maybe add filters and effects to them with Photoshop, I also do any altering with photos with Photoshop, and once I have all my graphics, I use Fireworks to put it all together. Then once I have done my whole site, I finally code it out with Dreamweaver. I use each of those programs for what they were built specifically FOR. If I had to chose only 2 of those programs, I would choose Illustrator & Dreamweaver though.

[proc355]

dreamweaver's for pussies

[ducks]

[Snowshiro]

Focused, your comment is interesting, and I'm sure that Fireworks is perfectly adequate at layout, but so is Illustrator. When I've tried firing up Fireworks in the past, I've always felt that I've just been adding another stage to the development process that wasn't really necessary. Try as I have, I've always gone back to Illustrator as my main tool for mocking up page layouts. I think the takeover of Macromedia by Adobe, and the subsequent range of products in CS3 has made Fireworks even more redundant because it's no longer competing with the Adobe juggernauts.

[Web Surgeon]

Yea, the only thing I prefer it over Photoshop for is the slicing/automated rollover (a.k.a "400 image tabled layout").

[haku]

dreamweaver's for pussies

I like it for keeping my sites organized. I dont actually use any of the automated functions in it, and I rarely even refer to the design window, but I like it because it supports css, javascript, xml etc, and it color codes all the tags making it visually easy to see. With the FTP function on it it makes it easy to load pages onto your server, and take them off as well.

So while dreamweaver writes crappy code, its a good tool for managing sites. There may be something a little cheaper out there that does the same thing though, I have never shopped around to find out. But for that purpose it works well for me.

As for fireworks, Im glad to see this thread because I have been wondering exactly what it does myself, and whether its worth the effort to learn it. I do use it for the batch processing functions however, they are nice.

[focused]

Originally Posted by Snowshiro

Focused, your comment is interesting, and I'm sure that Fireworks is perfectly adequate at layout, but so is Illustrator.

Oh yeah definitely. Like I have said, you could use either Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks to map out your design. I just like to use Illustrator for vectors, and fireworks for web design, just because Fireworks has that extra touch for the web. Things like pages,etc. And usually, when your working with formatting a site, most of the options you need are displayed in 1 panel with fireworks, no need to be messing with different panels and such.

Also,stuff like 9 slice scaling is really nice.

I'm honestly interested what they keep doing with Fireworks. They could easily make it that must have app for web designers. They need to implement that new color feature that Illustrator has, they need to update the interface like photoshop and illustrator, and they need to support more advanced css roll overs and things of that nature.

But each program allows you to do a little of what the other program does. I already know many people use Photoshop to vector, and they prefer it over Illustrator. Hey, who am I to judge?

dreamweaver's for pussies

WHATEVER. You must be real hardcore, being able to position all your css elements with no visual aid whatsoever

I can code with notepad, but I see absolutely no point in it whatsoever, aside from why a lot of people do it, basically to tell their clients or tell the forum they are apart of

"pfft, I code my whole page in notepad, noobs"