Macromedia Fireworks
I’ve been wanting to dip my toes into the water of graphic design for a while now. But I have no schooling or training in it, and any attempts I’ve made in the past have not gotten very far. Part of the problem, I think, was that the graphics programs I’d tried were either too simple or had horrifically unintuitive interfaces.
Recently at work, I downloaded the trial versions of Macromedia Fireworks and Adobe Illustrator, since those were two programs that seemed to be recommended by various people in the web design community (note I did not mention Photoshop, because I’m mostly interested in web graphics right now: icons, buttons, boxes, logos, etc.)
As soon as I opened Illustrator, I was quite appalled (yes, appalled!) by the fact that all the little pallets remained where they were when I moved the window, and didn’t even stay within the bounds of the window itself! It made shivers go down my spine! (Ok, maybe I am a little weird.) Anyway, the controls weren’t all that intuitive either. But I admit I didn’t really spend that much time trying things about, because…
I pretty much loved Fireworks as soon as I started it up. No bizarre floating windows, and it was so easy to get started making fun little pictures.
I’m loving vector graphics. They just make so much sense. You create an object, you should be able to go back and tweak it. Each object has properties associated with it: color, brush stroke, shadow, size, aliasing, etc. Decide you don’t like the color after all? Simple, just select the object and change the color. Now, maybe it’s possible to do this with non-vector-based software, too, but I certainly didn’t find it self-explanatory and simple, like it is with Fireworks.
I’m just getting started exploring this program, and already I’ve created some pretty cool looking little icons for work. Fireworks makes me look like I know what I’m doing. I’m looking forward to learning more. Oh, and the star shape tool is wicked awesome (to use a Bostonian turn-of-phrase).
December 10th, 2005 at 12:38 pm
“Fireworks makes me look like I know what I’m doing.” - Amen to that. I’ve never been a big fan of Adobe interfaces. Hopefully they’ll retain the same functionality with future releases of FW, now that they bought Macromedia.
December 10th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Yeah, I hope so!
Hey Nathan, do you have any particular recommendations on good books to learn more about Fireworks? It’s pretty intuitive already, but a book would help me discover things I might not find myself.
December 10th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Interesting… I haven’t ever used Fireworks. I’ve always just relied on Illustrator. But now that you mention it… I may play around with it. And like Nathan says, I hope Adobe keeps such programs around in the future.
December 17th, 2005 at 5:11 am
I happened upon this post and found it rather interesting, as I enjoy studying UI design. I can fully understand having a physical reaction to an interface.
Recently, I’ve been entertaining the idea of trying a vector graphics program, as well. I have used neither Illustrator nor Fireworks, since Photoshop has been sufficient for my purposes (both vector and, of course, raster) over the years. In addition to AI and FW, I have heard praises about Xara.
In general, I prefer paned interfaces to palette interfaces. Though, in an application such as Photoshop, the image that the user is manipulating can and should occupy most of the screen real estate, relegating tools and controls to moveable palettes. Other applications, like Adobe After Effects and perhaps Illustrator, are indeed better suited to panes, rather than floating palettes. In these applications, the user spends about as much time directly manipulating image objects as controls elsewhere in the interface.
Ironically, the paned UI of Fireworks, which you enjoy, may be due to the settlement of the lawsuit Adobe filed against Macromedia for using tabbed palettes. However, it appears that the coming version of After Effects will be adopting a dockable palette/pane approach. Thus, there may be hope for Illustrator and what will become of the Macromedia applications.
December 20th, 2005 at 12:22 am
I haven’t used Fireworks, but I adore Illustrator. It took me about a year to really learn how to use it. When I started I hated it. But it’s an amazing tool. I use it whenever I can instead of Photoshop. It may be work to learn, but the versatility and precision you get in return is well worth the effort. “Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book” is a good place to start.