FW icons by Deleket

Last few days, Smashing Magazine compiled few tutorials and download focusing on Adobe Fireworks and it is cool that one of my Fireworks tutorial is featured there as well.

That article is a great source for Fireworks user and also a great eye-opener for those who haven’t heard any single thing about this piece of great software.

FYI, Fireworks was one of Macromedia products, along with Flash and Dreamweaver, untill Adobe acquired Macromedia few years back.  Since then, I have been wondering whether Adobe will shut Firewoks development off since they already have that widely known Photoshop. I am not much of a Photoshop fan so this concerns me a lot.

If you want to get a clear differences between Fireworks and other softwares such as Photoshop and Illustrator, I recommend you to read through the comments in that article. Lots of people are sharing their experiences and opinions there.

My personal favorites :

by Vincent

I have been using Fireworks for about 1.5 years now and I find it more efficient than Photoshop when it comes to Web UI works.

I never took Fireworks seriously until about 2 years ago, when I went to an interview for UI Designer position, the hiring manager told me that she couldn’t hire me becase I didn’t know Fireworks. Imagine my shock! A manager decided not to hire me because of the software I chose to use, not because my design capability, critical thinking, attention to detail and team player quality.

Anyways, I turned my outrage into positive energy and picked up a copy of Fireworks and digged right in.

Now, I just can’t go back to Photoshop anymore for Web UI work. Fireworks is so much easier to use for creating UI. I don’t need to stop to create my design. I simply create it.

Highly recommended!

and by Andrew

Thanks for the post. As a big Fireworks fan, it’s nice to see it getting some publicity.

Fireworks has been my weapon of choice for a few years now, quickly, here’s why:

Photoshop was designed for… (get ready for this) Photos! Thus the name. For people editing and manipulating photos, nothing works better.

Illustrator was designed for… (you guessed it) Illustrating! For illustrating or working on vector graphics, I wouldn’t use anything else. It is really good.

When it comes to web graphics though, PS is too powerful and has too many unnecessary options. Illustrator isn’t optimal—graphics for the web, unless you’re using flash or SVG are always going to be displayed as bitmap images, Illustrator is designed for vector work. This fundamentally doesn’t mesh well.

Fireworks, on the other hand, allows you to use any mixture of vector and bitmap objects but it always displays them in pixels (like you’d see them on the web). You have complete control over sizing and positioning of things (illustrator when exporting will size your image to fit the paths in it, this gives undesired results often). Fireworks has web-appropriate filters, effects, and styles. Then, maybe, most importantly Fireworks gives you the most control over how images are optimized and exported.

Bottom line: Fireworks is completely designed for web graphic, PS and Illustrator are not.