Requirement

Adobe Fireworks CS5 and higher

Article

1. Document Templates

Although Fireworks ships with built-in templates, you can easily create customized templates for your project types and embed symbols and assets so that you always start from the same base to produce consistent work (and save some time.). You can create basic templates for ecommerce sites, mobile/iPhone apps, and even interactive Flash or Catalyst elements.

2. Workflow to create and to use Templates
1. Save As

You can save any file as template with the Save As Template feature. Templates are saved as editable PNGs.



Figure 1: Save As

2. Store templates

The Templates folder contains the built-in templates that ship with Fireworks CS5 and your customized templates. Fireworks CS5, suggests to open the Templates folder, no matter where you saved your custom template(s) last time.



Figure 2: Built-in templates

3. Open from New Document window

When you open a new document from the New Document window, you click the Templates button and you are redirected to the Templates folder.



Figure 3: Open templates

4. Open from File menu

When you open a document from the file menu, select New from Template.



Figure 4: Open from File menu

3. Paths

Windows XP

C:\Program Files\Adobe Fireworks CS5\Configuration\Templates

Windows 7

C:\Program Files\Adobe Fireworks CS5\Configuration\Templates

Mac

/Applications/Adobe Fireworks CS5/Configuration/Templates/

4. Issues

The problem is that Windows Vista and Windows 7 will not allow you to write to system folders. It means that will not be able to save to the Templates folder.

A workaround has been identified. Right-click on the "Configuration" folder in the Fireworks installation directory and modify the security settings so that "Users" have write and modify privileges. This allows Fireworks and the Extension Manager to write and manages files in this folder.

This will fix the issue with permission to write inside Program Files, but it will not fix the sharing issue if you want to share templates in a small team. You cannot share Program Files, and you cannot t move templates folder to a shared drive outside Program Files, too.

5. Conclusion

Fireworks templates will provide an easy-to-use starting points for common projects and CS6 should fix fully the issues.

Where to go from here