Macromedia Fireworks All-In-One Web Graphics Tool Forrest Stroud
Web graphics creation and optimization tools are all the rage lately and the competition should only get fiercer as the big boys continue to enter the fray. Tools like Ulead's GIF Animator and GIF Construction Set brought about the emergence of Web graphics tools, but while these apps focused primarily on creating animated GIFs, the new class of products widens the scope to creation, manipulation, and optimization capabilities for all types of Web graphics.
The latest Web graphics tools from the likes of Adobe (ImageReady), Macromedia (Fireworks), and to a lesser extent Microsoft (Liquid Motion) fill a need currently lacking in commercial graphics applications like Adobe Photoshop. And while most of the new tools are a bit on the expensive side, if you spend any significant amount of time developing or working with graphics for the Web, the high price of one of these tools is more than offset by the savings in time, frustration, and overall satisfaction.
Fireworks is the latest all-in-one Web graphics creation, animation, and optimization tool to hit the 'net. This combination vector and bitmap imaging app especially excels at optimization tasks for GIFs, animated GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs, but it's also a full-scale graphics creation and manipulation program like Adobe Photoshop. If you're a long-time Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro user, you'll probably find the Fireworks interface a bit difficult to adjust to, but after getting by the relatively short learning curve you'll find that Fireworks isn't lacking in many areas.
Like Photoshop, Fireworks supports layers and will import the layering information of a Photoshop file without any problems. The app also supports editable, scalable text (a feature shared by the latest release of Photoshop, v5.0, and Adobe ImageReady); image slicing (cuts an image into separate segments and allows the slices to be loaded selectively on the Web, optimized individually, or even saved in different formats); JavaScript rollover capabilities (automatically generates HTML code for interactive buttons and graphic 'hot-spots'); and the ability to create image maps (both client-side and NCSA server-side image maps are supported).
