Fireworks 4.0

Other products by Macromedia

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000050XB9
• Item model number: FWW40D01
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 13, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #15,076 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #17 in	Software > Web Development > Web Effects > Objects
  #77 in	Software > Web Development > Web Effects > Animation

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review
Fireworks, PhotoShop, Fireworks, PhotoShop. If you've been researching Web-graphics software, these two names are likely rattling around your head incessantly. So which program is right for you? Well, while PhotoShop wrangles the title of best overall high-end image editor year after year, it's still not the most robust solution for Web graphics--that claim belongs to Fireworks 4. Dedicated to the Web-graphics world, each new Fireworks release strengthens its hold on its domain (no pun intended). And, if Dreamweaver is your Web editor of choice, uniting the two programs will make you a very happy matchmaker indeed.

Fireworks' strengths lie in its focus on the creation and optimization of bitmapped and vector Web graphics. Files are integrated easily into Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver, and importing/exporting Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator files is a breeze, especially with the program's improved layer-mask handling and a new Color Fill Live effect. Version 4 rolls out a new interface that Flash, Dreamweaver, and FreeHand users will recognize. Tabbed menus allow for customization and keep the screen tidy while organizing elements. New tools for adding interactive elements--rollovers, navigation bars, and pop-up menus--are a very welcome sight. And a Live Animation feature creates frame-based GIF animations, using symbols, instances, and tweening features familiar to Flash users. With built-in HTML and JavaScript capabilities, version 4 delivers the goods to the Web-graphics design community.

Like we mentioned, Dreamweaver users will fully realize Fireworks' full potential. These two programs assimilate perfectly, creating the most powerful Web-editing suite available today. --Eric Twelker

Amazon.com Product Description
Macromedia Fireworks 4 delivers a robust solution for Web design professionals who seek a standard way to create and optimize Web graphics. Quickly create resolution-independent vectors, edit bitmap images, and create GIF animations with multiple frames in a professional environment. Fireworks 4 Web graphics workflow is optimized for creating advanced interactivity. Easily develop buttons, rollover effects, and sophisticated navigation schemes with multilevel pop-up menus in a step-by-step visual environment. Support for multiple file formats and common design standards lets you quickly design and produce graphics, HTML, and JavaScript that can be moved seamlessly between popular graphics and HTML applications, such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver. Use accessible controls to reposition, redirect, and reanimate simple animations across multiple frames from within the Fireworks workspace. Quickly set up and execute batch processes, including commands, by using the step-by-step Batch Processing Wizard. Edit and update HTML and JavaScript code and graphics from Dreamweaver, while maintaining edits to your table. Use enhanced setup and export of HTML/JavaScript and images to customize automatic file naming, table handling, and other output options.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Manuals and reputations can be misleading..., July 5, 2001

By A Customer

As a lifelong artist, but relatively new web designer, I have owned Photoshop 6, Illustrator 9, and FrontPage 2000 for as long as their respective lives. Despite the help of numerous 3rd party books, AND the sizable manuals of the Adobe products, I still could not get past using only FrontPage for virtually all web work (I admit, FrontPage is pretty straight-forward and easy). I did feel like a kid on training wheels, and knew my creativity was suffering horribly due to my lack of creative control. I considered trying Macromedia products. I was always a little intimidated by Dreamweaver's rep as a 'professional' web authoring tool, and figured if I couldn't learn the Adobe products, why try to learn DW? Eventually curiosity prevailed and I decided to give the DW and Fireworks 4 demos a try. I fell in love with both. IMO, Fireworks is very intuitive . I quickly learned how to utilize most of the features by simply referring to the 'poor' Fireworks help menu, and trial & error. I produced some outstanding effects, buttons, menus, animations, and banners with Fireworks. (no more tiled GIF newbie backgrounds!) I feel like a pro! I also read a few books on HTML to break away from relying on the "cookie-cutter" designing style of FrontPage. I work in DW code view more than design view now. I use Fireworks design objects almost exclusively. With the seamless intigration, and a little code tweaking (personal preference), I am achieving outstanding results. And to think I was a NEWBIE less than a year ago. I couldn't purchase Fw, DW, and Flash fast enough.

There are several great books on how to use Fireworks. Virtually all of them can be found right here, in Amazon.

While PS6 is the better image editor, Fireworks holds it's ground in virtually all other areas. It is a very powerful program (when used properly).

I tried Fireworks 4 and ultimately bought it (along with Dreamweaver 4 & Flash 5) I suggest you give the demo a spin.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Alternative for Photoshop, August 21, 2001

By	Lonny Potecho (Jerusalem Israel) - See all my reviews

Although it is a heavy application and not as professional as Adobe Photoshop - Macromedia Fireworks enables anyone with very little experience to create good looking Graphics and special effects to any image with very little design experience. The price is great comparing to Photoshop Suite which is close to $1000. To tell you the truth I used Fireworks on most of my sites and Photoshop just for the last touch and some very special effects that I didn't know how to do on Fireworks. It is very easy to create shapes since you can move each lines individually - you can control every single dot in the image, and you don't have to be an expert - everything is explained - and this software is followed by some great tutorials by Macromedia.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing product..., January 9, 2001

By	Bruce Pierson (Bozeman, MT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Macromedia has outdone themselves with this product. Creating rollovers, especially, is now a painless and really cool "drag and drop" process. This even applies to creating popup-menus. You can create popup menus on the first day you use this product. They have included the entire Java source code to do these. Be warned though: This is a big Java file, 25k or so. I don't know enough about JavaScript to know whether the entire file is included in your web pages with popup menus, but if it is, this will add a huge burden on each page (maybe it's a server-side function? I just don't know).

With the addition of selective JPEG compression, the need for Photoshop or other image-editing tools is on the wane.

The other really cool thing is the roundtrip to DreamWeaver (4 or UltraDev 4) is now VERY SEAMLESS. I couldn't believe how great this feature worked.

There are many, many other features that are either upgraded, added, or otherwise reorganized to make more sense.

You will love it.