With the release of Fireworks CS4 coming soon, books are starting to be released. Read my review of Jim Babbage’s book: Fireworks CS4 – 100 essential techniques.

No need to constantly look at the property Inspector when positioning objects. Tooltips will give you a heads up display of the X and Y location in real time. Similarly when you create or modify an object width and height are automatically displayed. Read more.

The set of arrows has been updated. The new set has now 137 arrows which are coming as vectors or symbols in the Document Library. You can eventually transfer the symbols from the Document Library to the Common Library to be shared across documents. Read more.

This new command of Fireworks CS4 enables you to create an AIR application from a fireworks prototype. Read more.

Those terms are more and more common in the Fireworks jargon since Fireworks is now the rapid prototyping specialist.

The starting point is the creation of the structure of a web page or a website: layout of the fundamental elements with navigation (with or without interactivity) with no colors, graphics, or fonts. After approval of the first wireframe a more detailed version is proposed and so on until the HTML layouts.

Creating a set of wireframes is also called a story board and each new wireframe an iteration.

Those techniques are very similar and are attempts to make the website building process more rational to avoid making endless changes and the programmers tweaking their code too often. Read More.

Useful links:

• Web Site Wireframe
• Website Wireframe
• Wireframing with Fireworks CS3

In a new video, Rick Jones, the new Fireworks manager, is talking about PDF export, the new Attach in path feature and CSS Export.

Adobe link: Fireworks CS4 feature tour

FontList is a very handy Fireworks extension that allows you to quickly preview all the fonts installed on your computer. You can apply directly your fonts to your text and place your favorite fonts inside 3 tabs. A huge time saver. A must have.

Read more.

In Fireworks CS4 you have 2 new tools to make measurements to give you values such as width, height and angle. Read more.

Since Fireworks CS4 is full of new tools and commands tutorials and videos are badly needed to learn them all. Here are my best resources available:

Layers Magazine

Video Tutorials on TV Adobe and particularly David Hogue’s videos to learn everything about adding interactivity (through layers, pages, states and Behaviors) to a prototype.

• Rapid prototyping
• The complete design process
• Information and interaction design
• Creating interactive prototypes

Not to mention Fireworks Zone’s started a new series of tutorials on Fireworks CS4. Here are the first to be read:

• Take Screenshot
• Demo Current Document
• Text Wrapping

Adobe Systems officially announced on 23rd September the introduction Creative Suite 4 product family. See article from the press room.

Adobe Creative Suites 4 are scheduled to ship in October 2008.

A new feature ‘Attach In Path‘ in Fireworks CS4 enables text wrapping around shapes. Read more.

In Fireworks CS4, Demo Current Document is a new command which enables you to generate rapidly a presentation of your mockup as a slideshow. Read more.

In the new Fireworks CS4, Take screenshot command is a universal tool for screen capturing. It enables you to take screenshots not only from Fireworks but of any other applications opened. Read more.

Alan Musselman from Adobe is in Paris for Demonstrations and because I live in France we will be meeting and hang out in Paris on 20-21st September. Expecting to show you some photos. I am over the moon!

The Fireworks 10th Anniversary winners are:

• Graham Hamand from the UK
• John Pleasnick from the US
• Karel Orzel from Poland

Thank you all for your participation

Going back in Fireworks history, it seems that Fireworks 1 was launched around April, 1998 and today we are a few months late but we can celebrate a decade of Fireworks.

You can add more details to the Fireworks version table http://www.fireworkszone.com/fireworks-10th-anniversary_118.html where you can view all the Fireworks versions from Fireworks 1 to Fireworks CS4.

Fireworks 10th Anniversary coincides with my birthday on 20th September (I am a bit older than 10)

On this occasion, Adobe, is offering 3 Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium for Macintosh only (Sorry for the Windows people).

Please contact me to receive one of these boxes and don’t forget to add your postal address.

As the information structure is getting more complex in Fireworks with documents containing multiple pages, we get now a 4-level structure: one document can include several pages which at their turn have their own layers and frames.

As a result, the problem is how to relate those elements and DistriFusion Pro might be an answer.

DistriFusion Pro is an innovative command to help you organize your objects between Documents and Pages. It is a bridge between Document(s) and Page(s) enabling you to freely transfer objects: document-to-document ; document-to-page or page-to-page.

Download freely the DistriFusion Pro’s Manual to learn more and to see if it is meant for you.

More and more designers are now reflecting on Fireworks. After a first article in July from Digital_Web, a second one more recently Making Illustrator and Fireworks Fit it is now [Re]Encoded who tries to answer fundamental questions: what are Fireworks and Photoshp strenghts and weaknesses and at the end of the day which is best?

For their comparison they take into account 4 features:

• Quick Modifications
• Print Design
• Web Design
• Advanced Techniques

Read the whole article.

Fireworks Zone is releasing a Set of approx. 200 dot seamless textures in white and black, in colors, and in different sizes.

You may purchase this new Set either as Fireworks Patterns or Textures.

Stéphane Bergeron’s comment:
Here is a very nice post about Fireworks and Illustrator
from Mordy Golding’s blog who used to be Illustrator’s Program Manager before
Dave Macy the current one. He has a lot of positive things to say about
Fireworks which is a refreshing change coming from an “old” Adobean.
It’s also nice to see the focus removed from the Fireworks-Photoshop
comparisons. Having come to Fireworks from Illustrator myself which is
the first graphic app I’ve learned and used,and being a Photoshop
refugee, still not understanding how anyone can prefer it to any vector
app for layout and design tasks, it was a good read. Well worth reading anyway.

Read the whole article.