Creating Web Graphics with Adobe FireWorks

Adobe FireWorks - Just how good is it for web designers?

Accelerate web design and development with Adobe® Fireworks® software, the ideal tool for creating and optimizing images for the web and rapidly prototyping websites. Like it’s new step-brother, PhotoShop, FireWorks is a superb piece of graphics software that no web designer should be without. Similar to PhotoShop, in that it has the same intuitive workspace and a huge support network through online forums and support sites, FireWorks is specifically optimised for web graphics and for web design. Fireworks offers the flexibility to edit both vector and bitmap images, a common library of prebuilt assets, and timesaving integration with Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Flash software.

Designers can mock up designs quickly in Fireworks, or leverage other assets from Illustrator, Photoshop, and Flash. Then move directly into Dreamweaver for easy development and deployment. The interface includes a comprehensive set of design tools, including styles, blend modes, filters and auto shapes. Web designers can choose from dozens of styles to quickly change the aesthetics of any object. Options include chrome, stone, ice, reflective, glass, plastic, and more. There are also dozens of lend modes to customize the appearance of your objects and interface elements; a plethora of lighting effects, shadow effects, styles, and blend modes (including seven new blend modes from Photoshop), to add depth and character to text and symbols. Optimize graphics for virtually any delivery scenario with preview, cross-platform gamma preview, selective JPEG compression, and a wide range of export controls, and then cleverly splice them for the web or CSS with the 9-slice scaling function. A great new feature in the CS3 version of Fireworks is the ability to create multiple web pages at once. Designers can use the new Pages panel to create multiple pages in a single document (PNG file), and share layers across multiple pages.

Each page can contain its own slices, layers, frames, animations, and canvas settings, making it easy to simulate website flow in a prototype. Added to that, the new multi-layer support allows users to include multiple web layers within a single Fireworks (PNG) file, share a common web layer across all pages, or be selective about which pages include the web layer. Designers can also edit a single layer and then apply the change globally – saving loads of time. There’s better integration with Illustrator in CS3, as well as enhanced integration between other Adobe products, including PhotoShop and DreamWeaver. This helps to make the whole web design, development and graphic construction as seamless as possible. In all, FireWorks is a fantastic design tool for all web developers and designers. Anyone even thinking of web design should download the free trial and have a play.
I guarantee you won’t be disappointed! You can check out some of the graphics that can be created with Adobe FireWorks for web design at the DataMouse site.

Contact DataMouse.biz for all your web design, database design or graphic design needs.