New features in the official 1.0 release include symbols and instances (create a master object - the symbol - and copies of it - the instances - are automatically updated whenever the symbol is modified); image tweening (a cool morphing-like feature that blends aspects of instances or a symbol and its instance across objects, opacity, Live Effects, and transformations, creating interim frames with transitional attributes); a WebSnap Adaptive color palette for optimizing GIF images with browser-safe colors; and import capabilities for Photoshop, FreeHand, Illustrator, and Corel Draw (with an option for automatic translation of layers into animated frames for FreeHand and Illustrator files).
Fundamentally, Fireworks is a vector-based imaging program, allowing you to create editable bezier paths and objects for more compelling images and animations. This results in editable "Live Effects" — for example, create some text with a drop shadow and when you change the text the drop shadow automatically changes with it. The time and frustration that this feature alone saves you will more than offset the product's rather expensive price tag. Every aspect of a graphic, including text, objects, and image maps, is fully editable and can have effects applied at any time, with the effects following changes in the underlying object automatically and in real-time.
The export preview is one of Fireworks' strongest features. The preview allows you to balance file size and image quality across a number of instances in order to create the optimal graphic -- one that looks great and downloads quickly. You can use the preview to place the original image next to an optimized one, or you
can create a view with the original image and up to three optimized ones, each with a different setting.
For example, you can place the original image next to an optimized image in adaptive GIF mode, one in progressive JPEG mode, and another in 32-bit PNG mode.
Figure 1. Snapshot of the Export Preview Screen
In addition to the image itself, each preview displays the total file size, the time it would take to download the image on a 28.8 Kbps connection, the image format, and the format settings. You can fine tune each image to your heart's content with a number of GIF optimization settings and color depth options for GIFs, a quality scale and smoothing options for JPEG images, and a bit depth setting for PNG graphics. While Fireworks doesn't compress JPEG images as well as ImageReady nor animation GIFs as well as a standalone GIF animation tool like Ulead's GIF Animator (although it does comes very close), its GIF compression capabilities are among the best on the market. Fireworks also supports LZW interframe optimization for better optimization of animated GIFs.
