Notes from Teach Yourself Macromedia Fireworks MX in 24 Hours
Chapter 1
File>Open to bring in an existing image (pick one)
Menus - File, Edit, etc. with submenus
Tools - on left, grouped by category - Select, Bitmap, Vector, Web, Color, View
Keyboard Shortcuts for tools - e.g. W for Wand, B for Brush; useful because you can use left hand to select tool whereas mouse then doesn't have to leave image
Screen modes - Tab key to make all menus disappear or appear (toggle)
Z - Click Zoom Tool - Alt Z to zoom out -- Can also change magnification in drop-down menu or View>Magnification
H - Click Hand Tool - or Hold down space bar -- to move picture around
Property inspector is context-sensitive, just like in Dreamweaver
Panels - can group them as you like, just like in Dreamweaver - You can save a particular panel configuration by Command>Panel Layout Sets>Save Panel Layout You give it a name and then can retrieve it by Command>Panel Layout Sets>[name you give it - it appears in menu]. Can rename or delete by Commands.Manage Saved Commands
Chapter 2 - Image Collection and Management
Pointer tool (V or zero)- Click on object and can drag to new location or use arrow keys to move object 1 pixel at a time or enter x,y coordinates in property inspector and hit enter
Anytime you have copied an image to the clipboard, if you open a new blank file in Fireworks, the dimensions of the canvas will be set equal to the dimensions of the image on the clipboard
Rest of chapter discusses how pictures can be scanned, taken from a digital camera, etc. from within Fireworks
Chapter 3 - Choosing Optimization Settings and Exporting Graphics
Click 2-up tab -- on the left is how the picture looks initially and on the right is how it looks compressed, along with the type of image (e.g. JPG), the file sizes, quality/number of colors, and download time for a particular speed
Click 4-up tab - upper left is original; click in a quadrant to change the optimization setting for that quadrant in the Optimize Panel (Window>Optimize) -- you may want to use the Hand tool to inspect how particular parts of the image will look
If one chooses a GIF, there are a variety of palettes one can choose - In a GIF, you are limited to a maximum of 256 colors -- how these colors are chosen depends on the palette (see. p. 63):
- adaptive - depends on the colors in the original image
- websnap adaptive - similar to adaptive except that it favors colors within the websafe palette
- web 216
- exact- only works if the original is limited to 256 colors
- macintosh
- windows
- grayscale
- black and white - 1 bit
- uniform - color information in original disregarded, uniform gradation in palette
- custom - can import from act files or a gif -- ensure uniformity within a project
Most of the time you will probably want to use adaptive
color depth - number of colors in gif whereas for jpeg it is quality (number from 0 to 100)
You can save optimization sessions for all four panels by clicking + sign at bottom of optimize panel
File>Export Wizard - click continue to accept defaults for the web; can set progressive for JPEG or interlaced for gifs if you want the image to gradually display as it loads; Can export just as image or image plus HTML (to display it in a web page)
Revised: October 10, 2003. Comments to William Pegram, wpegram@nvcc.edu