[hart]

I've been trying to figure out what exactly I might want to use Adobe Fireworks for. I've looked at the Adobe web site, skimmed Fireworks help, looked at video's showing how it's integrated with other Adobe apps and I'm still not clear why exactly I might want to open it up. (I got it with my CS3 package.)

What does it do that a combination of Illustrator, photoshop, flash and dreamweaver don't do? Or what does it do better? Do I take the time to learn it or just let it rot away on my hard drive? I see there are some Fireworks advocates on the board so speak up, let me know.

I don't know if this belongs here or in Applications so forgive me if I post in both to optimize my chance of getting some info.

[NeXTLoop]

Fireworks' specialty is web graphics. Nothing, not even Photoshop, matches it for creating web graphics. For everything else though, PS stomps it... as it doesn't do particularly well with extremely large images (bogs down quite a bit).

[hart]

I went through all the chapters in Fireworks help (which of course isn't very intuitive) but I still can't fit it into the work flow between Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I could see that it might facilitate certain kinds of work but not why I would want to funnel my work thru it. It may be that I'm in the middle of an actual project and trying to learn a new app at the same time is not helping matters.

The other factor is the subtly different way Photoshop and Fireworks label and utilize the concept of layers. The other thing is I couldn't quite grasp if one is supposed to create the entire web page in Fireworks or just the individual objects that go on a page. I never quite got to exporting stuff into Dreamweaver so the concept of how exactly stuff is coded and exported remains a bit foggy.

I think I need to try it when I'm not in a hurry.

[Kevin]

I don't see how Fireworks stomps CS3 for making web graphics. I'd love to hear an explanation for that. (Not denying or whatever, I am honestly curious)

Irregardless, You wont be seeing any updates to it. As Adobe now owns Macromedia and they killed Fireworks and Freehand off, and kept Dreamweaver. Which was ok by me since I used Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver as my main graphics tools.

I disliked GoLive, and I loved Freehand up until version 7 or 8 of Illustrator. When it surpassed Freehand in quality and usage.

[autumnrayne]

Originally Posted by Kevin 

Irregardless, You wont be seeing any updates to it. As Adobe now owns Macromedia and they killed Fireworks and Freehand off, and kept Dreamweaver. Which was ok by me since I used Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver as my main graphics tools.

not tryin to insult you, or anything- im just curious as to why you believe this when fireworks CS3 was released alongside all the other apps in both web design versions of the suite and the "master" whatever version. (Adobe - Fireworks CS3, Vector Graphics Editor, Vector Image Editor) is / was there an article or announcement i missed concerning future versions of fireworks?

personally i like fireworks for the tools it doesn't give me. I do photo editing in photoshop, vector graphics in illustrator and bring it all together in fireworks to add layout elements and simple patterns / shapes.

[Oisín]

I’ve never quite been able to manage to work Fireworks into any kind of work flow, either. I suppose if you actually know how to use it, and use it well, it can be a useful tool for bringing large libraries of graphics together before putting them into Dreamweaver (right?), but as I never use Dreamweaver, Fireworks never seemed to make sense, either.

Originally Posted by autumnrayne

personally i like fireworks for the tools it doesn't give me

You like it for the tools it doesn’t give you?

Uh... I think I’m-a need an explainin’ on that one, Bob...

Originally Posted by Kevin

Irregardless, You wont be seeing...

Oh no, you di’nt!

[autumnrayne]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

You like it for the tools it doesn’t give you?

im probably just insane.

i like that once i've used the superior flexibility and tools for bitmap and vector editing in photoshop/illustrator, i dont have my UI cluttered with half-assed tools that im not going to use in that environment. i really like the ease that fireworks supplies for simple and repetitive shape effects / textures. if i make a sexy looking box i can save it as a style and use it again and again with a single click. and there are very effective (though quirky) plugins for fireworks that convert sites to HTML and CSS for you. fireworks also enables you to have different color schemes / themes on the same document in a single file, which i suppose you could do with layers and groups in photoshop, but meh.

looking at my reasoning, i realize that you can do most of these things in photoshop. i guess what it comes down to is that i like the simplicity. it does what i need it to do, and it doesn't make it hard to get done. i've used photoshop for 6-7 years, but have recently switched to doing most of my web layout work in fireworks. like anything else, its just personal preference. i know people who prefer using BBEdit or textedit to write their web pages as opposed to a WYSIWYG editor like dreamweaver.

interesting, thought somewhat dated article on this subject here: pixelyzed.com :: pixel forge :: Why Choose Fireworks?

[warra]

it's funny how Fireworks is packaged with cs3 when adobe already has Illustrator to do the same thing, unless I'm mistaken. However, I much prefer fireworks over illustrator