Monday, June 2, 2008

JavaScript Engine in Fireworks

Adobe Fireworks has had a scripting engine built into it since a long time. This is similar to other Macromedia family application like Flash.

The scripting interface to the application is a great way in enhancing the product to ones own suitability. Users have created numerous scripts which prevents them from doing the same operations again and again.

After you do an operation on the canvas, copy that step from the ‘History’ panel and paste it in a text editor. You will be able to see the JavaScript that is equivalent of the operation just performed. Just to let you know things like drag and drop from the panels to canvas is not scriptable and does not generate history step.

Also some steps in the history have a cross mark applied to it indicating that the step cannot be done as a script operation.

The following link will take you to Fireworks Exchange where users have uploaded their scripts which can be helpful to other designers who are not very conversant with the scripting skills and yet yearn for such functionalities.

Apart from the JavaScript support, the application also supports Action Script 2 events. This is a great feature where power users can create custom panels. Some examples of the custom panels in Fireworks are ‘Color Palette’, ‘Symbol Properties’ and many more in the ship version of the product. Apart from them the panels under Commands menu are all Flash panels which communicate with Fireworks.

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