Foundation Fireworks excerpts: Visual effects and extending Fireworks

Whether you're a designer looking for a quicker way to prototype and create for the web or a web developer who finds most design tools to be overly complex for your needs, productivity is key—and Adobe Fireworks is your web productivity tool of choice. Foundation Fireworks CS4 can show you how to get the most out of Fireworks so you can maximize your efficiency without sacrificing any creativity or power.

Use the unique collection of Fireworks vector- and pixel-based tools. Learn about improved integration with Adobe Illustrator and smarter Adobe Photoshop file support, as well as the complete Fireworks workflow, from idea generation to standards-complete HTML export with CSS layouts.

Foundation Firework CS4 includes several real-world case studies, including creating a blog, building CSS sprites, and assembling a web commerce site. Advanced coverage includes using Fireworks to turn rich Internet applications into desktop apps with Adobe AIR.

Note: Excerpted from Foundation Fireworks CS4 by Grant Hinkson et al. Copyright © 2009. Used with permission of friends of ED. For more information about this book, visit friends of Ed.

Creating visual effects

Fireworks provides all the tools you need to create advanced, sophisticated, wow- your-audience visual effects—from something as simple as a simulated reflection to as complicated as magical glowing particle trails. In fact, because of the flexibility of the Fireworks toolset, we think you'll find that creating effects in Fireworks is much faster and flexible than in other design tools. Every object, every gradient, every filter, every everything in Fireworks is infinitely editable and tweakable, giving you the ability to try, change, and remove until you're satisfied (or exhausted).

This chapter looks at the building blocks to create effects and then combines these building blocks to recreate a number of popular effects seen across the web, print, and RIAs or desktop applications.

Download the chapter excerpt:

• Chapter 6: Creating visual effects (PDF, 550K)

Extending Fireworks

Fireworks includes a rich extensibility model that allows advanced users to create sophisticated custom SWF panels using a combination of JavaScript and Adobe Flash Professional. In fact, many of the panels that ship with Fireworks are SWF panels. Because the Fireworks engineering team has exposed practically every aspect of Fireworks through a JavaScript extensibility model, you're really only limited by your imagination (and technical abilities, of course).

This chapter—written for advanced users of both Fireworks and Flash who have some JavaScript and ActionScript programming experience—gives you an understanding of the entire SWF panel development process and presents a workflow we have refined through developing a number of Fireworks panels, including the Fireworks to XAML Exporter panel and the Gradient panel. You'll see how to author Fireworks JavaScript and integrate that JavaScript in both Flash and Flex based custom panels for Fireworks.

Download the chapter excerpt:

• Chapter 11: Extending Fireworks (PDF, 450K)

Where to go from here

To learn more about extending Fireworks, visit the Extending section of the Fireworks Developer Center.