Fireworks CS4 Beta - Live Gradients

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.

Fireworks CS4 Beta - Stronger PSD support

1. In CS4, when a psd file is opened/imported a dialog box will pop up from where the user can choose the way objects will be brought into Fireworks. The dialogs can be suppressed through this preference setting.
2. Image Layers refer to the bitmap objects of Photoshop. Either the bitmap objects can be brought into Fireworks with editable effects or the effects along with the object can be converted to a complete flat image using this preference setting.
3. The text preference setting can bring the text as editable or as a bitmap converted image.
4. Shape Layers refer to the vector objects in Photoshop.
• The “Editable path and effects” setting will bring the object as editable vectors. But this may changes the appearance.
• “Flattened bitmap images” preference setting will bring all the vector object and effects applied on them as a single bitmap image.
• The last preference option seem to bring the best of both, where the shape layers will converted to bitmap object but the effects applied on to it will be editable in Fireworks.
5. Fireworks has two sets of filters, one being its native set and the other one borrowed from Photoshop. Through this preference setting, when a psd file is imported/opened the user will have the option to map the effects contained in the psd file to either Fireworks native filters or to the Photoshop filters which are also present in Fireworks. Since the algorithm for same filter might differ, there may be slight difference in filter appearance also.
6. The appearance of clipping masks in psd files when brought into Fireworks as editable, changes quite a lot. This preference setting will solve this problem to a certain extent where the clipping masks and the base object will be converted to a single bitmap object maintaining the same appearance as seen in Photoshop.

Thus all the object types can now be controlled independently through this preference settings dialog. The tooltips for each of the preference is also quite self explanatory.

NOTE: The above preferences will be applied to the objects when user selects “Custom Settings From Preferences” option from the Import/Open dialog’s last drop down menu.

When a file is saved as a psd file from Fireworks, the user can control the individual object’s save type settings. Controlling the individual object type saving setting is possible after selecting “Custom” from the first drop down menu.

Other feature details

1. When a file is saved from Fireworks, the layers have the blend mode set to “Pass Through”. This will be helpful in some cases where the blend mode is set to Screen for layers in Fireworks.

2. When a mask has been created through Paste Inside option, it will be flattened when exported as a psd. This will maintain the appearance but the tradeoff is that the mask will be lost.

3. Content layer solid fills, all color spaces and bit depths and Color profiles in a PSD file will be converted to RGB 8 bit when opened/imported into Ignite.

4. When a psd file is opened, slices and guides are carried into Fireworks CS4.

Fireworks CS4 Beta - New User Interface

The entire application interface has been given a face lift. The grey theme of the application gives a ‘different’ look to the application.

The panels and all the related UI elements have been redone to be in sync with the new UI look and feel.

The panels can be docked and docked along with other panels. They can also be kept floating around the canvas workspace. Also the panels can be tied to the ends of screen where a blue line will become visible when they are dragged to that side of the screen. The below image show panels floating around the workspace. Clicking on the panel will expand it to access them.

The above image shows the options present to show the panels. Iconic mode is the smallest mode where just the panel icons will be visible. Clicking on the icon will expand it.

Mac users can also get a choice between the classic Mac floating feel of the application or the windows style of tabs for documents and fixed place for panels.

1. This option will bring in the tabs for the document. If the user wants they can pull out any document from the set of tabs and make them floating.
2. The broad bar present on the top of application where the shortcuts are present can be removed using this option.

There are many more functionalities present in the handling of panel adjustments and the UI for the application for you to explore. If you feel any problems and are stuck feel free to ask me.

Fireworks CS4 Beta - Features

Adobe Fireworks CS3 released with a mega feature pack in the spring of 2007. The CS4 version is more about polishing those features to make them fit easily with the designers. This release focuses more on the usability issues of designers and also for the feature discoverability.

Apart from the polishing of existing features, there are some big requested features which have also been added in the CS4 release.

1. User Interface has gone a complete overhaul

2. Smart Guides are a real time saver while aligning objects on canvas.

3. Better Photoshop integration in this beta release.

4. PDF Export is now possible. All the pages in the png file now become pages of pdf file.

5. 9 Slice Scaling is available as a tool. No need to create a symbol to 9 slice scale the objects.

6. Live Styles Improvements- Designers have the flexibility of creating new styles,

7. Symbol In place Edit similar to the Flash work flow for components.

8. Live Gradients. Moving the handles of gradients makes the changes live on canvas.

9. Screenshot Tool is available on windows and works similar to Mac screenshot.

10. Frames is now renamed to ‘State’

11. Asynchronous saving for documents.

12. Flex Skinning

13. AIR Package creation

14. Text Engine has been re-architected.

15. Exporting the layout as CSS and Images.

16. Better support for Nested Symbols

17. New Path panel for vector based operations

18. Color Palette panel has a new look and extended the earlier functionality.

19. Usability changes to Pages, Layers and States panel. All these panels now have right click enabled in them.

20. Two new tools have been added ‘Arrow Line’ and ’Measure Tool’

Tune in to further posts where I try to explain some of the features mentioned above.

Adobe announces Fireworks CS4 beta on labs !

Fellow designers and Fireworks users.

Adobe just announced the availability of its web designing and prototyping tool Fireworks CS4 beta on labs.

Please follow the below link to visit the labs site from where you can download a copy of the public beta version.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fireworkscs4/

In the subsequent posts I will walk you through some of the changes and enhancements made in this release. I welcome all feedback/suggestion/bug discussion for the beta version of Fireworks CS4.

Have a great time exploring the powerful features and also reading the subsequent posts for feature related details.