Sarthak

Yahoo Developer Network has hosted some nice assets for wireframing and other designs. These assets are Adobe Fireworks png files which are in the symbols format allowing them to be reused across multiple pages in a document.

You can copy them in the Common Library location and refresh the panel. They will be available for your design layouts or wireframes.

A screenshot of the assets is shown below:

The complete article and the files are placed at http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/about/stencils/fireworks.html

Quite an impressive set!

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a new extension by Eugene which gives you a set of pre-built cursors for web. The use cases might be huge for web designers and eases them from building it from scratch for them.

The extension is available at Adobe Fireworks Exchange http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&loc=en_us&extid=1879523

Once the extension is installed the assets will become visible in the Common Library folder where all other pre-built assets for Adobe Fireworks are shipped.

Download the extension, install it and save some time by not creating these icons.

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A new extension has been posted on the Fireworks exchange. It targets the buzz of mobile space i.e iPhone.

Designers can now create application designs and prototypes for the iPhone. The extensions allows you to preview your designed app in a iPhone simulator which is AIR based. The transition effects which are the trademark of the mobile device are also built in the extension and can be applied to the designs.

Be sure to read the pdf document which comes along with the extension to understand the usage and functionality. The extension can be downloaded from here.

Kudos to Mayur Mundada for creating one more cool extension for Fireworks. The extension will work for CS4 with AIR 1.5 update.

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Facing problems while copy pasting layers and the layer structure not being respected.

Now worries now! Just use the extension created by Mayur

Download Link

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Past:
In the days of Macromedia, Fireworks was a tiny niche, but popular application preferred by people for its flexibility while dealing with bitmap and vector objects. That is still a very big advantage for the application but the journey for it is being defined freshly to find a more strategic spot in the creative suite of products.

CS3 was the first version under the flagship of Adobe brand for Fireworks. The tag of “Rapidly prototype and Design for the web” was well received by the designers and other consumers of the application. The application started gaining importance for Interaction Designers, Information Architects for various activities from Wireframes to Website prototypes.

Present:
The journey does not end here and gives Fireworks unique opportunities at different stages. CS4 release projected a stronger Suite Integration story for the application apart from making website prototypes easier to create and maintain. Fireworks seems to be the tool for any design which has to be put on the web.

Future:
Exciting times lay ahead with Adobe focusing on this application. It fits well in the portfolio for Web Designers where Adobe is gaining strength. Making itself as the first choice tool for Web Designers, free lance designers, Interaction designers, Experience engineers will not be an easy task but Adobe is fully committed to this vision.Being a design application, the focus stays on refining the existing design-centric workflows, creating new ones to keep the application abreast with the technology advances around it.

An interesting opportunity lies in the area of Interaction design where a click through mockup of an application or website or even a workflow is needed. Fireworks has the feature set which makes it a natural choice for designers of that portfolio. Adobe will continue to invest in that area by promoting Fireworks as the right tool for these designers.

Fireworks has been a tool preferred by freelancers and designers but there are some bottlenecks when using the application in their design process. The commitment is there to streamline that process and go the extra mile of reaching the stage where the design can be handed over to developers in case of website or web applications. For freelancers, they can just spit out standards-compliant CSS from Fireworks itself and tweak it.

Vastly improved support for CSS was a major effort in CS4 release and the feedback has been very positive on that front as well. Let us all get excited and anticipate for the exciting times that lay ahead for Fireworks with Adobe brand fully committed to it.

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Users facing the text bounding box issue can breathe a sign of relief as there is a workaround for that problem. As a temporary solution is through an extension which will correct all text objects whose blue colored bounding box has been shifted in the document.

Important Note:

1. Running this script will correct the bounding boxes for all text objects in the document affected by this bug. This correction is limited for that png file edit session only. The bug may be encountered again during future file edits where the extension script will need to be executed again.

2. Any CS3 text element if present inside a Group ONLY will get re-rendered on running this script. After installing this extension, you can access this script from Commands menu-->Re-sync Text

This extension will not touch any text elements containing missing fonts. The missing fonts dialog pops up when opening a png file which contains fonts not found on the system.

Thus there is no need to worry about CS3 text and missing text getting re-rendered unnecessarily on using this Extension.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&loc=en_us&extid=1706527

Re-sync Text Bounding Box is a simple Extension which will go through each and every text element present in a png document (be it inside a page or a layer or a state) and re-align its bounding box.

EXAMPLE:

The following is the screen shot of a file which got affected by this problem.

After running the extension script mentioned in the above link, the following is the state of text objects.

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Adobe Fireworks CS4 extending document is live with the new document containing all the changes in the API for the product. The same document is also available as a pdf file which can be saved on you local disk for referring to it while you are disconnected.

Web Help Link

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Fireworks/10.0_Extending/index.html

Downloading PDF Link

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Fireworks/10.0_Extending/fireworks_cs4_extending.pdf

Utilize the power of JavaScript interpreter built into Fireworks to enhance your productivity. To give you some examples, many panels have been built entirely using this technique. Some of them are Path, Align, Export to AIR panels.

Explore the power within the application.

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have seen that users of Fireworks are running into issues where the design job is lost while saving the file. I admit to this begin a huge frustration for the users and we will work on to better it. Till that time a useful utility is present at the following web address which can save the png file automatically for you.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/marketplace/index.cfm?event=marketplace.offering&offeringID=10210

This is an AIR application which will save your work automatically. It will not update the original png file but will create a folder FWAIRBackup where the auto saved png file will be placed. The extension will successfully work in versions CS3 and CS4 of Fireworks. The only requirement is that AIR run time needs to be installed which can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Further details of the extension can be obtained from the first link. Any other doubts or queries post them right away.

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Two new articles have been posted at Fireworks Developer Center on www.adobe.com. The actual links for the articles are mentioned below. For people new to this location, it houses articles, extensions which range from traditional usage of Fireworks to extending the functionality to its limits. Explore the following new articles apart from the old ones which are a good read.

Lorem Ipsum placeholder text generator for Fireworks
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/loremipsum_panel.html

Workspace Manager panel in Fireworks CS4
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/workspace_manager_panel.html

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have written some utility extensions for Fireworks which can all be accessed by clicking here.

Also I have written a couple of articles on Fireworks DevCenter. One of them is related to 9 slice functionality emphasizing on the tool itself which can be read here.

In case you need some extensions to be written or would like to discuss about a new one, I am open for a discussion.

Posted by Sarthak Singhal at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)