Customer Reviews

Fireworks 3 Bible (with CD-ROM)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you own Fireworks, or Dreamweaver, you know that the documentation is somewhat limited. Both the Fireworks 3 Bible and the Dreamweaver 3 Bible are the standard referance and documentation for these two products. I am not a graphically gifted person, but by using Fireworks and the Fireworks Bible I can easily create impressive graphics, animated buttons, toolbars, java enhanced pages, split images, etc. But I can only do this because the Fireworks Bible easily tells me how to do it.

This is one of those books you can browse through and see something and say "oh cool...I need to try that" and it will step you through how to do it. I would recommend this book to both beginners and experts. It's full of examples, and makes a great reference for the Fireworks 3 program. I've been waiting for this to be available from Amazon for months, I was able to put it to good use immediately. Thanks Joseph Lowery...Awesome Job!

This book is, without a doubt, pretty comprehensive, and I'd also have to say it is pretty much the only good Fireworks 3 book out there as of now.

The reason why I gave it only 4 stars instead of 5 was because the organization of some chapters were rather annoying. Around the third or fourth chapter, the author starts exhaustively listing all the menu items and options in the software. For somebody who has never used Fireworks before, it was a little frustrating going through all the available options in Fireworks without having really done anything yet. I was expecting a task-oriented instructional style early on where a task would be defined, and it would be followed by steps on how to achieve the defined task, which, along the way, would have familiarized the user with the menu options. This is not to say that the book does not do this, but I had to skip that chapter that comprehensively listed all the menu options to get there. (Perhaps I should learn to jump from chapter to chapter instead of dogmatically treading the book from cover to cover.)

Also, in some areas where a graphic sample was presented, steps were provided on how to accomplish such a graphic output via lassos and marquees. I thought the description on lassos and marquees were pretty good, but I had difficulty understanding how to replicate one of the graphic outputs shown in the book, the one where a man's face was surrounded by concentric circle patterns, even after reading and rereading the paragraphs. Perhaps more illustrations might have helped.

Other than these few isolated instances, the book is pretty good, and I would recommend it to people, but just don't expect it to be ever-so-perfect. I think 4 stars describes it well.

With my background being primarily in database and application development, reading the Fireworks 3 Bible was somewhat of a sidestep for me. For quite a while I have been writing ASP pages to serve as front ends to my databases-- all the rollovers and DHTML I used was hand-coded. Though fun, writing such things out manually is anything but speedy. Enter Fireworks! Not only is Fireworks speeding up my development, the work I produce is of a decidedly higher order.

The Fireworks 3 Bible is the only serious work out there on Fireworks. Luckily it's a good tech manual. I have hardly any background in graphic design, so I sat down and read this book cover to cover (if you know Photoshop/Illustrator you should be able to skim and pick up just the details you need). It was great to get an overview of vector graphic and image editing-- I feel as if I could pick up other Macromedia/Adobe products and fudge my way through basic designs.

I would recommend this book to any web developer. My approach to web development has been completely altered.

Hi,

Ok, I wanted to create my own personal web site featuring my college work in the field of engineering. I had heard of Photoshop, but a friend told me of FireWorks from Macromedia. I downloaded the trial version and followed the small tutorial that comes with the program. After a few hours of using FireWorks I could not believe how easy it was to use. I figured the program had to be more powerful, that is when I said hello to Fireworks Bible 3. The book takes you step by step and it is extremely easy to create killer web-ready images! The book also teaches you how to use Fireworks with your scanner. The book, and the software are extremely powerful and extremely affordable. I highly recommend this book if you are thinking, thought, or will think about creating a web page. Five Stars without question.

Macromedia offers yet another incredible product and Lowery offers yet another incredible reference. If you have never used Fireworks first buy the getting started manual: Fireworks 3 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart (at a great price here at Amazon). If you are familiar with Fireworks it is well worth its cost (if you value your time at all) to have this excellent reference to find and use all the new and wonderful features in the new version of Fireworks (and believe me, there are plenty of them).

I was a long time user of Photoshop and just got Fireworks 2 in the packaged deal with Dreamweaver 2 to simplify some wed design tasks (Javascripting behaviors with images- little coding experience needed). Fireworks 3 has all the web design capabilities, but also does many of the same functions as Photoshop (layers, filters, etc.).

Speaking of the Dreamweaver/ Fireworks combo- a great value. ................... If you do any web development- buy it. The Visual Quickstart Guide and Bible are aslo great books for Dreamweaver 3. Lowery also authors the popular Dreamweaver Bible series. This is nice, since the two tools (FW & DW) are also meant to be used so integrally.

Good Luck and Enjoy! ;~)

There is no doubt at all that Lowery not only has the indepth knowledge about the subject but the fact that the fluent,lucid and fantastic manner in which he explains the complete Fireworks subject in nothing short of amazing. Very few computer gurus can teach what they know, I mean teach well, and without doubt Lowery is one of them. If you are knew to fireworks,or at the intermidiate level,this is the book which after reading, you can afford to add the word "GURU" in your title. If you are looking to pick up Fireworks fast,have no time to waste through fat books, EVEN THEN,do NOT miss out this brilliant book.Skimming through section 1 of this book should be enough to help you working efficiently with Fireworks menu and toolbars.I mentioned this point cause I myself was under tremendous pressure from my manager to pick up the Fireworks stuff for the projects,and initialy had opted for the "Firworks fast and easy web development book" so I could immediately pick up the tool.Wrong Choice.I gave up reading that book within 30 minutes of opening the first page.

This book guides you thro the steps involved in familiarizing with the Fireworks basics and then moves on to the deeper and extensive stuff which you can do with Fireworks. The first 136 pages are slow and you may feel like throwing away the book.DONT.The real fun starts after the 136 pages provided you have read well upto that part. after 136 pages its nothing short of a high speed Bond movie chase. Each chapters/articles are carefully detailed with enough of juices to drink which would last a lifetime. Basic chapters like "managing color"(in my opinion a very fundamental principle to learn and pick to avoid making amess of your website),'choosing strokes',"composing text" and many more - form the Second section of "Mastering tools".This section is a beginner's delight. The author then moves on to more advanced sections like "acheiving effects" , programming with fireworks(if you need it), and many more.

This is the kind of book you pick up to learn a new subject and then make place for it near your desktop for a lifetime refrence and guidance.

After waiting what seemed like ages for this book, I can say it is definetly worth the wait! Together with the Dreamweaver Bible, what more does one need to design killer web sites? Nothing! Lowery does it again!

The book is good for learning how to do most if not all of the fireworks basics. It also covers a few advanced topics, but not in enough depth.

The book is the only one on the market so if your looking for another resource, try the manual.

Otherwise, I would suggest it.

I recognize that this is probably the most comprehensive book on Fireworks 3, but I am a little disappointed in it. There is lots of good information. It is sometimes overwhelming. There are examples in the book that you just can't follow along with. They give you the completed exercise but why not give you the starting graphics, give you directions and let you create the finished product yourself. I was also disappointed in several chapters on the CD ROM that didn't seem to have the correct files as the chapters in the book. So I decided to go to their web site to see if they had corrections. When I went to the site identified in the book, it was the site for the Fireworks 2 book. The book is an invaluable resource and should be in anyone's collection if they are working with Fireworks 3, but, in my opinion, this is not a 5 star book.

This was a fairly good book. But, I found myself getting lost and confused several times while reading. I have never used Fireworks 3, and I have not used any other sort of graphics design program before. So I am new to graphics design. I found the book to be very helpful but confusing in a couple of chapters. I did have a few problems with the book. The first couple of chapters throw all the menus and tool options at you right off the bat. It kinda blew my mind, and I almost had a melt down! One last thing I didn't like about the book is the constant pointers to using Fireworks with Macintosh. I am ofcourse a Windows user, so I found the constant references to Mac pointless. I will remain a Windows user until the day I die, so I could of done without the references to Mac in the book. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Moreover, I would recomend this book to anyone who wants to learn a quick and easy graphics design program such as Fireworks!