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.

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.