Foundation Fireworks CS4- P2: The chapters in this book are divided into three parts: “Part 1: Learning Fireworks,” “Part 2: Using Fireworks,” and “Part 3: Fireworks in Action.” In this first part, we start by introducing you to the Fireworks application where it lives within the Creative Suite, what makes it unique, and why you would use it. You’ll be introduced to the bitmap and vector tools and learn how to export your artwork to the Web. | WELCOME TO FIREWORKS bars being diced into multiple pieces and stretched laboriously to represent the actual width or height needed by the layout. In short they saw the pain that users were experiencing to create application mockups that resembled their final output when running as a true application. To ease this pain the Common Library Window Common Library was created. Figure 1-6 shows the Common Library panel with the Flex Components category expanded. Figure 1-6. Common Library panel A large number of controls have been implemented as Fireworks symbols that you can drag from this Common Library directly to your page. In addition to Flex-styled controls there are both Mac- and Windows-styled controls as well as a number of non-OS-specific controls and icons to speed the creation of your layouts. Figure 1-7 shows the Flex Mac and Windows versions of the RadioButton symbol. The Symbol Properties panel is used to set common properties on the selected control such as Text and State Normal or Selected for example . 9 CHAPTER 1 Figure 1-7. Setting RadioButton symbol properties These are some of the common features that make Fireworks a great tool for prototyping Pages States Common Library Create AIR Package command Export Flex Skin command Export FXG command PDF export HTML export Fireworks and the Creative Suite While Fireworks can stand on its own as a design tool it doesn t have to. And because of its strengths and history in web design Fireworks is often used as an integration tool prior to slicing and exporting images for use on the Web bringing together assets such as logos or retouched images created in other tools. It s important that you be able to import artwork created in these other tools and export to their native formats as well. The Fireworks team along with the rest of the Adobe engineering team has gone to great lengths to develop an effective workflow between Fireworks and the other Creative Suite tools such as Photoshop Illustrator and Flash. The
