Macromedia Fireworks 4 Fast & Easy Web Development (Paperback)

by Lisa Lee (Author) "Before you can use Fireworks 4, you must check your computer to make sure that it meets Macromedia's requirements for running Fireworks 4..." (more)
Key Phrases: swap image behavior, down button state, nav bar graphic, Button Editor, Export Preview, Color Mixer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Don’t spend your time wading through manuals to learn Macromedia Fireworks. Spend it doing what you do best— creating Web pages! From the basics of getting started with and customizing Fireworks to designing interactive Web graphics and integrating Fireworks with Dreamweaver, this book offers a unique, hands-on approach that you won’t find anywhere else. Less time, less effort, more results!.

About the Author
Lisa Lee is a software and Web engineer/Web developer in the computer industry. She is the author of "Photoshop 6 Digital Darkroom," "Fireworks Fast & Easy Web Development," "Easy iMac," "Easy iBook," "Easy Linux," "Upgrading and Repairing the Macs," and "Teach Yourself Mac OS 8.5 in 24 Hours."

Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade; 1 edition (February 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761535195
• ISBN-13: 978-0761535195
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #638,600 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This item is part of The Fast & Easy Web Development Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Shallow, Disorganized, Worse than the manual, April 18, 2001

By A Customer

I know that many of the computer books out there are replacement manuals for pirated copies and electronic software downloads, and I also know that many people just like an approach that relies heavily on screen shots. So the market for this kind of book seems straightforward enough.

The problem is that this book is shallow and disorganized. It does not contain nearly as much information as the manual. It teaches you very few usable techniqes, relying instead on showing you how to use individual tools in isolation. It teaches you artistic creation tools by adding effects to triangles and squares, rather than real world graphics. Even mediocre art would have been a substantial improvement, since many of the tools exist to create art, rather than triangles, and it is hard to appreciate what they can really be used to do.

As a beginner book, perhaps you can forgive it for neglecting power techniques, but one wonders why concepts (like bitmap vs. vector, GIF vs. JPG, color depth, and so on) were given such short shrift. Beginners especially need this to be able to make the best decisions when exporting graphics; simply walking them through the export interface is not enough. It is almost as if the author took a thousand screen shots first and then wrote a book around them.

The book is not a total waste. There are a lot of screen shots, so at least you will probably get glimpses of what some of those more esoteric buttons lead to. The author did a nice job with callouts, so you know what you are looking at in the screen shots. If you are a visual learner, who likes to browse around casually for ideas, this book may very well work for you. If you prefer to understand things with a little depth, or if you are hoping to see how polygons and lines can create artistic effects, keep looking.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth the paper it is printed on, April 14, 2001

By	Salvatore T. Falco (Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The reviewer from Boston is right. This book is little more than a re-write of the manual, and is a waste of money.

Worse, it isn't even a good re-write. The book suffers from a problem that too many software books have: it assumes that the reader has never seen a modern piece of software. Does anyone *really* need instruction on "Navigating the Menu Bar"? (pp. 29 - 42) If you need to be told how to open and close files with the file menu, you're already way out of your league and need to get a basic Windows/MacOS book. The first 100 pages of the book are so much wasted paper.

Unfortunately, the subsequent 500 pages aren't much better. Instructions are poorly designed and disjointed -- and there are errors throughout the book. I lost count of how many times I had to re-read sections thinking I'd missed something because what was on my screen didn't match what Lee described, only to discover that I hadn't missed anything -- Lee had.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars visually helpful examples, April 6, 2001

By A Customer

so far it looks like this new edition is a total rewrite of the previous. I prefer to learn new software with stepbystep examples combined with screenshots and this book is it! recommended!