Macromedia Fireworks 1.0

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Fireworks is a revolutionary program but its interface is reassuringly familiar. In fact it looks pretty much like any other bitmap program with a dockable info palette next to the colour bar down the right hand side of the screen and various tabbed floating palettes for controlling brushes, fills, layers and so on. The Toolbox is pretty standard too with the typical paintbrush, paint bucket and eyedroppers all available, although the lasso tools are mysteriously grayed-out. Creating a new file is also a sure sign of a bitmap application as you are asked to set its size and resolution in pixels.

by Tom Arah, designer-info.com
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Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Download Macromedia Fireworks 1.0
Coming Soon

Links

Fireworksr Links Directory

Adobe Fireworks

Official web site

Download the recent version (Trial)

Fireworks Design Center

Fireworks support center

Fireworks documentation

Fireworks support forum

Fireworks Exchange

Fireworks LiveDocs

User Group

Fire on the bay


Active members in the Fireworks community

Aaron Beall . Alan Musselman . Bleuprint . CommunityMX . Dreamworld . FireworksGuru . Fireworks Zone . Grant Hinkson . John Dunning . Linda Rathberger . Matt Stow . Phireworx . Pixelyzed . Senocular . Six Things . Solar Dream Studios

Fireworks Community Experts

David S. Anderson . Bryan Ashcraft . Jim Babbage . Christian Baptiste . Kai Baumgartner . Jolantha Belik . Adam Bell . Amy Blankenship . Angela Buraglia . Laurie A. Casolino . Lawrence Cramer . Joyce Evans . Kevin French . Nancy Gill . Tom Green . Michael Hamstra . Stephen Howard . Juan Jimenez Lopez . Tatsuo Kato . Joseph Lowery . Brajeshwar B. Oinam . Nadia Perre . Linda Rathgeber . Stefan Richter . Jesse Rodgers . Dee K. Sadler . Paul Marcel Salazar Jiménez . Ashvin Savani . Jörg Schmalenberger . Adrian Senior . Daniel Short . Stephanie Sullivan . Murray Summers . Ray West . Derren Whiteman .

del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us/adobe/Fireworks

This list comes from Fire on the bay

General Fireworks resource, with a combination of tutorials, textures, autoshapes, extensions, PNGs, etc:

http://www.fireworkszone.com
http://www.senocular.com/fireworks/
http://www.phireworx.com
http://www.fwkit.com


Fireworks tutorials:

http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/rapid-fire/
http://www.designpicnic.com/web-atelier/


Sites not dedicated to FW but with FW tutorials:

http://www.projectseven.com/tutorials/images/index.htm
http://www.communitymx.com/category.cfm?catID=3&typeid=2
http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Fireworks/
http://www.pixel2life.com/tutorials/adobe_fireworks/
http://www.tutorial-pedia.com/tutorials/2d...hics/fireworks/
http://www.solardreamstudios.com/learn/
http://www.entheosweb.com/fireworks/


Our own Fireworks guru forum tutorials:

Creating a sitemap with reusable symbols - Alan
Reflective 3d ball - Snakebite
Using Blend Paths to create wavey, abstract background effects - abeall
A Simple little Envelope - Adam!
Shiny Happy Buttons - Adam!
A Simple Little Pencil - Adam!
A Teddybear - Adam!
Creating Abstract Backgrounds - blue2x
Shiny Ball / Sphere - Adam!
Using Grids to make Swirls (e) Symbol, How a grid can come in handy - Adam!
A computer mouse in 7 layers - Adam!
Curtains effect - lian
3D Glow Frame Effect - blue2x
Gel Cap / Plastic Button - Mapnapkin
Lighting Effects - lian
Creating reusable, flexible, custom Ajax loading animations - stowball
Animated Snake Loader - stowball
3D-Dots Tutorial - raja
Starburst Light Effects - blue2x
Quick masking technique using Convert to Path - Alan
Faded Shadows - lian
TV Static Effect - raja
Creating Rain - blue2x
Turning Day into Night - blue2x
Controlling Exposure in Photographs - lian
Curved Tabs - lian
Scotch Tape Tutorial - Juliano Haussen
Old Paper Effect - lian
Sunburt Tutorial - lian
Vector Maps - so1980==MikeTaylor
3-D Comic Book Effect - so1980==MikeTaylor
Customizing Bitmap Patterns - so1980==MikeTaylor


Textures and Patterns

http://www.squidfingers.com/patterns/
http://www.patterns.ming-ling.net/tiled.html
http://www.citrusmoon.typepad.com/
http://www.playingwithfire.com/holidays/tiles.html
http://www.mayang.com/textures/
http://www.noctua-graphics.de/

Stock photography

free

http://www.sxc.hu/
http://www.morguefile.com/
http://www.freephotosbank.com/
http://www.bluevertigo.com.ar/bluevertigo.htm - (massive list of free and pro stock resources)

http://www.yotophoto.com/
http://www.openstockphotography.org/
http://www.public-domain-photos.com/
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ - free for low res, cost for high res(cheap)
http://www.imageafter.com
http://www.everystockphoto.com/
http://www.freefoto.com

cheap

http://www.istockphoto.com/
http://www.stockxpert.com/
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
http://www.dreamstime.com/

high end and rights managed

http://www.inmagine.com/ - all royalty free, some expensive, some free
http://www.gettyimages.com
http://www.veer.com/
http://www.punchstock.com/

Fonts

free

http://www.dafont.com/
http://www.abstractfonts.com/
http://www.1001freefonts.com/
http://www.showfont.net/
http://www.searchfreefonts.com/
http://www.eternalfonts.com/
http://www.websitetips.com/fonts/pixel/ - list of pixel fonts
http://www.youfont.com/
http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl
http://www.typenow.net/themed.htm - themed/brandname fonts
http://www.houseoflime.com/dings.htm - lots of useful icons/dingbats

licensed

http://www.veer.com/products/type/
http://www.linotype.com/
http://www.myfonts.com/
http://www.fonts.com/
http://www.adobe.com/type/

identify a font with these tools(very handy!)

http://www.identifont.com/identify.html
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

RSS

Get the RSS links on your own reader or web site!

Alan Musselman
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/amusselman/index.xml

Adobe Fireworks Design Center: Recent tutorials
http://rss.adobe.com/en/design_center_fireworks_tutorials.rss

Adobe Fireworks Developer Center: Recent tutorials
http://rss.adobe.com/en/developer_center_fireworks_tutorials.rss

Fireworks News
http://rss.adobe.com/en/resources_fireworks.rss

Fireworks : Top Issues
http://rss.adobe.com/www/support/top/top_fireworks.xml

Fireworks : Recent Documents
http://rss.adobe.com/www/support/recent/recent_fw.xml

Fireworks Support
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/rss.cfm?forumid=14

Support

Top Issues

Documents

News

Design Center

Developer Center

Alan Musselman

Adobe Fireworks CS3

When Adobe took over Macromedia, there was doubt over whether it would carry on developing Fireworks. Without the new shared CS3 interface, and with some of its promised features still missing in the press beta under review, it certainly seems semi-detached. But the good news is that Fireworks is still here and firing on all cylinders.

Fireworks offers a good mix of vector- and bitmap-editing capabilities, but naturally, it can't compete on all points with Adobe's graphical flagships. Instead, all three are now designed to work hand-in-hand thanks to Fireworks CS3's new ability to open Photoshop PSD and Illustrator AI files. To make the integration as smooth as possible, Fireworks' handling of layers has been reworked to support hierarchical groups and subgroups, which makes working with complex layouts more manageable.

by Tom Arah, pcpro.co.uk
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Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Macromedia Fireworks 8

Disappointingly in this latest release the core bitmap and vector tools are left virtually unchanged. There’s a new Image Editing panel which provides slightly quicker access to the most common photo-editing commands, and a new AutoShape panel that lets you take precise control of settings such as arrow length and spiral radius that were previously set interactively. You can also now turn vector paths into bitmap selections and vice versa. Other creative possibilities come from a new perspective shadow command that can be applied to open paths and text and a new Solid Shadow live effect that repeats the object itself to create its effect. And Fireworks 8 adds no less than 25 new blend modes to boost creative options for combining the colours in overlying objects.

by Tom Arah, designer-info.com
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Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Macromedia Fireworks MX2004

As well as the new shared colour sheme and Start panel, the Fireworks 2004 interface has been given a number of tweaks to boost productivity. You can now swap between open files using document tabs and quickly maximize your work area with the Hide/Show Panels command. The new options for interactively scaling objects from their centre and for trimming the canvas to fit its contents are also handy. Much the biggest difference though comes from the new graphical pop-up previews that appear when you're choosing a fill, line style or font from the Properties panel.

by Tom Arah, designer-info.com
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Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Macromedia Fireworks MX

The first thing that strikes about this latest version is that it has been given the full MX make-over. All the previous floating palettes have been rationalized as panels that can be grouped and docked in the docking area down the right hand of the screen. An even more welcome change is the introduction of the new context-sensitive Properties panel at the bottom of the screen which has cut out the need for a whole swathe of former palettes such as Effects, Fill and Stroke. It wasn't bad in the past, but suddenly the Fireworks' environment seems far more productive.

Other interface enhancements include a new Zoom tool that is no longer limited to fix zoom levels and a revamp that splits the Toolbox into clearly marked vector and bitmap tools - though much of Fireworks' strength still comes from its ability to seamlessly mix the two technologies, for example to draw a charcoal-style brush stroke that can then be redrawn and given a new watercolour effect. Under the Toolbox's bitmap section you'll also find five new options - Blur, Sharpen, Burn, Dodge and Smudge - for applying local photo retouching. There's also a new interactive Gradient tool which can be used with bitmaps, vectors or text.

by Tom Arah, designer-info.com
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Quick Links
Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Macromedia Fireworks 5

The number 5 of Fireworks in this release was jumped to the next number which is 6 (MX). So the version 5 doesn't exist !.

Quick Links
Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Macromedia Fireworks 4.0

The changes in Fireworks 4 are immediately apparent on loading, with the program now sporting the shared interface that Macromedia is rolling out across all its applications. The most obvious difference is that the toolbox is no longer fixed by default and has been redesigned with smaller and more professional icons. Otherwise the changes include the addition of a launcher at the bottom of each image window which can be used to call up the most commonly used floating palettes, and the ability to set up custom keyboard shortcuts. Without features such as customizable or context-sensitive toolbars the Fireworks interface still isn't state-of-the-art but it's a definite improvement.

by Tom Arah, designer-info.com
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Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Macromedia Fireworks 3.0

The fundamental change to the Fireworks interface is the introduction of a tabbed image window - a more or less direct copy of the feature found in ImageReady. Essentially this integrates the optimisation functionality previously available from the Export Preview dialog into your ongoing editing environment so that you can easily switch to the Preview, 2-Up or 4-Up tab to see how your image will finally appear as a GIF, JPEG or PNG. To change any of the current output settings, such as the level of JPEG compression and smoothing, you now use the new Optimize palette while, for complete control over the individual colours in a GIF image's palette, you use the new Colour Table palette. Fireworks 3 has even copied ImageReady 2's most advanced optimisation features with the ability to create "lossy" GIFs and a preview option which shows how your image will look under the Mac's different gamma handling.

by Tom Arah, designer-info.com
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Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

Macromedia Fireworks 2.0

Fireworks 1 was a truly revolutionary program that set the benchmark for a new field of computer application - dedicated web graphics. Several features set it apart. To begin with it offered separate image modes for managing both scanned bitmaps and drawn objects and even allowed pixel-based effects to be applied to fully editable vector objects. Once graphics had been created, the program's URL mode made it simple to set up image maps or advanced rollovers. Finally the Export Preview dialog made the process of JPEG and GIF optimisation child's play. Fireworks' greatest success then was the way that it managed to combine, and at the same time simplify, the previously separate stages of the web graphics workflow.

In Fireworks 2 this process of integration has been continued with some major changes to working practice. In particular, the previously clear distinctions between pixel and vector editing and between image creation and HTML handling have both been blurred. The pixel-based tools, for example, are no longer grayed out when you select a vector object and when you enter the bitmap edit mode a striped border appears around the entire document rather than just the bitmap object. The dedicated URL toolbar has also gone with the hotspot and slice tools integrated into the main toolbox and the web layer integrated into the layer palette. The problem is that, since controlling vectors, bitmaps and URLs are very different tasks, the attempts at integration add nothing but confusion.

by Tom Arah, designer-info.com
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Quick Links
Fireworks 1 | Fireworks 2 | Fireworks 3 | Fireworks 4 | Fireworks MX | Fireworks MX2004 | Fireworks 8 | Fireworks CS3

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