Creating reusable, flexible, custom Ajax loading animations in Fireworks 8
Table of Contents
Change the color scheme of the loader
Now that you’ve created a loader, you can quickly change the color scheme to suit other projects.
- Select any frame in the document.
- Unlock the Swatches layer and make its group visible.
- Choose Edit > Find and Replace to open the Find panel.
- Choose Search Document, Find Color, and Apply to: Fills from the three pop-up menus.
- Click the Find color well and pick the darkest color swatch.
- Click the Change To color well and enter the darkest color in the new scheme. For this example, I will use #FF0000.
- Click Replace All. You should be prompted with “Search Complete. 17 Changes.”
Notice that as the original swatches created earlier were just varying opacities on the same color, the find and replace has created the entire complementary color range for the new scheme.
- Repeat steps 5-7 for all of the other colors in the scheme.
- Hide the group in the Swatches layer and you now have a completely new, customized loading animation.
Where to go from here
For more information about working with Fireworks, check out the following articles:
- Image editing tricks with Fireworks, by Jose Olarte 3
- Creating a night scene with Fireworks, by Angelo Sabal
- Creating lens flares using Fireworks, by Alan Musselman
