Adobe is going to kill Fireworks
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User-friendly but quite powerful behind the scenes. I could never get the hang of Photoshop or Illustrator. Sure, Photoshop may have features or Illustrator knows how to do text flow, but if you have creativity and you know what you want, then Fireworks does everything possible to get out of your way yet is even intuitive for beginners with the same UI. Everything is discoverable, all the features are quite orthogonal to each other and it throws open how ridiculous the need to choose between vector and bitmap everywhere else really is.
If this turns out to be true, it's a sad day.
To the best of my knowledge, Fireworks has no competitor or open source equivalent. If anyone is thinking about it, you'd have a customer for life from me.
...but it's also buggy as hell! If you're a FW user, take PS or Illustrator for a spin and it will seem wind-fast and rock-solid in comparison. The FW codebase may be in need of a complete rewrite or hardcore refactoring considering how brittle the software feels and maybe Adobe doesn't want to have talented coders working on this, especially since PS is being slowly improved with webdev friendly features. But I really hope they change their mind ...FW is the only design tool with an UI that fits my workflow and bends around my mind instead of requiring my mind to bend around its quirks
And Fireworks is quite buggy in some details, and it being a completely different codebase didn't help. I agree that AI and PS are much better in terms of stability and codebase and support, but they still feel like you're using an electric toothbrush to paint a wall.
For print graphics, it's LaTeX for me. It's not an entirely sane choice. Either that or very high resolution Fireworks, trying to deal with HTML5 (and bending that into a PDF with horrific results) or just giving up and using Word. Or Illustrator, for that matter, which is the sane choice. But Illustrator sits in an awkward gap and InDesign isn't much better either in that regard.
There's a market out there for a non-WYSIWYG application for print design.
and i sort of saw this coming for a while now given its somewhat odd positioning in adobe's product portfolio (overlap with photoshop, illustrator) and the lack of meaningfully updates over the past few iterations (though, as mentioned, there really hasn’t been much room for improvement for a while..). i’ve looked for alternatives, but sadly, can’t seem to find anything suitable.. on the plus side though, i imagine current versions should be perfectly capable for some time to come.
it is sad day indeed though.
If you work on a Mac, consider Sketch by Bohemian Coding : http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/ It's a great app, is updated very frequently and has come a very long way and could almost be seen as already superior to Fireworks CS6 in most ways.
Edit: it does @2x automated exports too, for instance. Quite handy for iOS coding or responsive design.
I've never had to open PSDs with Sketch, so I can't tell. If you have any question, feel free to tweet their account on twitter: I hear they are reactive and very friendly. And definitely close to developers and designers: a lot of the features added this year have come from user suggestions. Can't tell the same story with Adobe...
It's more of a Fireworks or Illustrator replacement then a PS replacement. It doesn't come with all the lovely filters and stuff PS has. It also doesn't have the complexities of Illustrator. But if you are a web developer, it has some of the best tools for that specific development. Icon design, web design, buttons, etc. are all a snap to create.
https://twitter.com/Hicksdesign/status/329882707507154944 https://twitter.com/Hicksdesign/status/329882861337464832
It's not the creation of rounded rectangles. It's being able to change the radius afterwards (which Photoshop can't do). Also, if you want to change the size of the rectangle later in Photoshop, without distorting the corners, it's not easy -- you have to subselect specific control points, and then move them.
It's not impossible in Photoshop, it's just that modifying rounded rectangles is a huge pain.
Well, that's if you fork for the latest Creative Cloud subscription, or wait for the next boxed version.
The upcoming Creative Cloud version, called Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud), finally offers re-adjustable radii (for all corners).
See more here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B...!
Fireworks fits an excellent niche, which is probably why Adobe likely won't sell it. I really liked some the new version 6 features, such as instantly turning designs in CSS3.
Sorry to see you go FW.
This would make sense, but I doubt they would be able to pull it off with the UI. Maybe they have decided that they have the market and people will just have to migrate.
We switched from Photoshop to Antetype company-wide now and we don't miss it (It's still here for Icon Design though). We also felt Antetype superior to Fireworks as it has ways do deal with dynamic layouts and prototypic interactivity.
It does CSS Sprites
CSS Properties
LIVE MOCKUPS
God damn adobe. I've gone so long without having to touch photoshop or illustrator for web dev because FIREWORKS IS PERFECT.
I've read a ton of articles on how/why I should use Fireworks for web design. Perhaps somebody could inform me on what I'm missing.
i get the sense that you can achieve very similar outcomes using either one, but just always preferred the way you do so with fireworks over photoshop and similar programs. i’m not too savvy in the design space, but would appreciate any insights into the differences between the two, particularly as it relates to workflow.
¹ should note that while i initially gained exposure to the program via less-than-legal ways, having since grown up i am now a happy paying customer. i imagine this experience is quite common and this type of exposure a net benefit to companies like adobe.
It generates CSS, JavaScript+Canvas and SVG code from your drawings in real time and can also import PSD documents.
The generated code works great on both Retina and non-Retina displays. You can even preview how your drawings would look on Retina displays directly in WebCode. It inherited a lot of things from PaintCode (our app for Mac and iOS developers), which makes it very nice for user interface design.
Also, preferences aren't in the usual spot (under the Apple menu)?
Unlike most here in this thread, I don't use FW for wireframing, prototyping or simple UI design. It's been our primary design for complete web/ui design tool for over a decade.
Let's hope Adobe comes to their senses.
Simple things like copy/paste work like they should, and whereas PS might be more robust, it takes 2-3x more clicks to achieve what FW can do in just a few.
A simple task like selecting a layer in Photoshop makes me want to cry.
Or say you have grouped layers, and there's a semitransparent layer in one group, and a background in another group, and 20 groups in between those groups.
They're stupid, Fireworks is awesome. Most people using Photoshop don't know about Fireworks or think they 'should' use Photoshop, so they do. Even tho it's a pain in the ass.
I would feel less abandoned by Adobe if they could simply make a better dedicated wireframing tool that shares the best of InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop rather than making me choose if today I want PDFs, Vector or Bitmap.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dont-kill-adobe-fireworks...
Go figure.
I need FW way more than I need PS these days.
How's Acorn as a replacement?
In stark contrast to PS, FW is one of a select few pieces of Adobe creative software that always 'just worked' as I expected. It is a remarkably intuitive tool for many tasks, and it'll be a shame to see it go.
I suppose it only fitted a small niche but it still did a great job!
However, a colleague swears by it for designing and developing HTML email newsletters. The general state of support for HTML and CSS in email clients is extremely poor, so you have to use inline styles and table-based layouts. Fireworks is perfect for this.
I haven't used Fireworks for years. Once you are proficient in Photoshop, I rarely found a reason to open Fireworks even given all of its benefits.
Instead, graphics software should be used for elements in the layout rather than the layout itself.
It turns out that positioning is quite orthogonal to colour. Borders are orthogonal to textures. Sizes are orthogonal to form design. Not entirely, but that's, in the first instance, how they should be formalised before further dependencies.
It is in combining them that we find beauty. And CSS3 is a far more suitable way of doing just that in a considered fashion than Illustrator could ever be.
I have no desire to ever be proficient in photoshop, which is why I like Fireworks. It's easy for me, a programmer, to open it up, figure out how to do what I need to do, and then get back to working on whatever site I'm working on.
I don't have half a day to spend trying to figure out how to change the white background to transparent because I want to introduce a background switcher to a website. I also don't want to have a designer do it either, not when I can open Fireworks and complete that task in 5 minutes.
That's the power of Fireworks in my opinion - a graphics tool for non-designers.
"People were telling me about it," isn't a good enough source for me.
Photoshop never felt right to me for doing prototypes that eventually iterate into an actual design spec. I need to crack open Photoshop a few times a year. I'm in Fireworks almost everyday. I'm sure a lot of it is my muscle memory, but for many of my graphic and photo editing tasks, Fireworks is so much faster.
Unfortunately, Fireworks has become less intuitive as its evolved and I suspect it's lost a lot of its luster to new users. Even though I'm only using Photoshop a few times a year, I still need to keep it around.
I suppose this change by Adobe will force me out of an old habit, but I'm looking forward to exploring some non-Adobe options.
I am game dev, all the mentioned things are in that context.
However, in the past 6 months I've started using an app called Antetype instead, and can't recommend it enough for screen design. http://antetype.com/
Also, get off my lawn.
Definitely not the same features and polish.
inkscape shares many features with fireworks. it's a great alternative for a big chunk of similar applications.
Could Inkscape advocate Adobe to let Fireworks live to help SVG grow?
Both Expression Design and Fireworks are now out of the way, so Inkscape could get a lot more traction.
It's probably fine for Windows, though.
I use Linux.