So I just finished Adobe Fireworks CS4 “How-Tos 100 Essential Techniques” by Jim Babbage. I’ve used Fireworks for years, right back to when I was doing my Final Year Project (see the Navigation when logged in). I use Fireworks for all my Web Design. I knew however that I wasn’t using all of Fireworks capability. After going through this book, here are the points I’ll check back on and make more use of.
- Creating a Bitmap Mask with a Selection
- Understanding the Transform Tools – real life use of 9-slice scaling
- Creating a Custom Shape – Path panel: Fillet Points, Punch Out
- Masking an Image with a Vector Shape
- Text Basics – Auto-sizing text block V’s fixed with and changing between
- Using Type as a Mask
- Adding Text to a Path (Text -> Attach to Path)
- Wrapping Text Around an Object (Punch Vector, then Attach in Path)
- Using Photoshop Live Effects. In particular Stroke! Great for making single or double outlines of text or objects.
- Working with Styles -> The Styles Panel and pre-defined styles. Very Useful!!!
- Using Blend Modes (blending layers)
- Converting Bitmap Selections to Paths (Convert Marquee to Path and then Stroke)
- Creating Animation Symbols
- Adding Component Symbols to a Design (dragging in form and button elements. Export as html and css gives the correct html code for the form).
- Creating GIF Animations
- Tweening Animation
- Using the Kuler Panel -> Window -> Extensions -> Kuler (clicking a color scheme sets up the colors in Fireworks).
- Site Prototyping – The Basics (setting up multiple pages and Master Page Layer)
- Sharing Layers Across Pages (Create a multiple page design -> Commands -> Demo Current Document: creates a flash-based slide show of each page.)
- Working with Metadata -> File -> File Info
Overall it was a good brush-up on my Fireworks. After going over the Site Prototyping, I read up a little more on pages. I do thinks its useful and hope to do the full web design with multiple pages in one Fireworks png, however dealing with the Footer between pages of different height still isn’t ideal. The footer can’t go into the Master Page Layer. I suppose it’d be best created as a symbol and used across pages which can then be centrally edited.