Using guides properly in Fireworks is crucial when you're designing and aligning multiple objects on the canvas to produce a pixel-perfect layout. The Guides panel started out as commands that utilized the powerful JavaScript API. While I added more and more commands to enhance my productivity, I felt that developing a panel in Flash would be beneficial not only for me but to other designers and developers who use guides in Fireworks as much as I do.

Thus the Guides panel was born (see Figure 1). I hope you'll agree that it can do some amazing things. The Guides panel features three tabs: General, Selection, and Store.

Figure 1. Guides panel features

General tab

The General tab contains the most commonly used commands (see Figure 2). Copy guides from different documents and even from the master page. Easily access the Guides dialog box. Create margins, clear all guides in one click, and add columns and rows easily. Save guides externally for later use, so you can reopen them in the panel and apply them to a new Fireworks document.

Figure 2. General tab features

Selection tab

One unique way of creating guides is to create a marquee selection and apply guides using the Guides panel around the selection or just on one side (see Figure 3). You can also create guides based on an object's dimensions. This is really helpful when you want to align more objects based upon that particular object's location in the document.

Figure 3. Selection tab features

Store tab

If you are working with multiple pages and do not need to save guides externally, use  this option to save the guides on a per-document basis (see Figure 4). This lets you quickly switch between various guide sets you may have already created on other pages within the same document.

Figure 4. Store tab features

Requirements

To make use of the Gradient panel, the following software and files are needed:

Fireworks CS3

• Try
• Buy

Guides panel

• guides_panel_fw_cs3.zip (ZIP, 80K)

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