Gradients are an integral part of every design application. I find anything designer has some degree of gradient applied to it. It may vary from a subtle gradient to one which is clearly distinguishable.
Fireworks had this tool from long back but had a workflow limitation where the gradient was not live. In other words when the gradient handles were moved around they did not reflect the changes on canvas until the mouse click was released.
Fireworks CS4 beta version just hit the nail on its head and solved this problem. Somehow now I feel that this is was a big limitation in Fireworks CS3 when I have got so much used to the live gradient present in the beta version.
In the above image a radial gradient has been applied to a vector object. It consists of 3 user defined operations.
1. The circular head of the gradient handle moves around the dark yellow circle in the gradient.
2. The rectangular end of the gradient increases the radius of circle.
3. When the cursor is placed in the line, it changes to rotational icon which can change the direction of gradient.
All the above 3 mentioned customizable options in a gradient are live now in Fireworks CS4 beta. In the previous version of Fireworks releases, the mouse click had to be released to see the change in gradient effect. There is a small performance hit on some occasions but I can easily survive with it.
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