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Using Fireworks MX 2004

Using Fireworks MX 2004. Designing interfaces in Fireworks, using a scenario methodology. What does Fireworks do?. It's a graphics editor Designed for producing graphics for the web It supports both vector and bitmap editing

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Using Fireworks MX 2004

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  1. Using FireworksMX 2004 Designing interfaces in Fireworks, using a scenario methodology

  2. What does Fireworks do? • It's a graphics editor • Designed for producing graphics for the web • It supports both vector and bitmap editing • Vectors are objects like rectangles and lines, which can be edited after they've been added to a drawing • Bitmaps are pixel based, if you draw a line on a bitmap you can't move than line later • Very good at producing screen mock-ups for software, in the design phase, and for production

  3. Exercise - Movie Database • Scenario • 1. Someone visits “MRes Online Video Information Experience” (MOVIE) • 2. They want to find out who starred in “Get Carter” • 3. They type the movie name into the search field and press return • 4. The then see that there are two versions of the film, the 196x version and the 2002 version • 5. They select one and get the details for the film (including the cast list)

  4. Napkin Sketch

  5. Time to start Drawing…

  6. Creating a new file

  7. Fireworks Document (Mac)

  8. Adding Objects • Everything you add to a drawing is an object (aka vectorobject) • Unlike with bitmap editors you can change objects after you’ve added them. • Resize, Reshape, Change line and fill colours, texture, shadows, and so on • Fireworks has a number of basic objects, like rectangles, ellipses, text, lines, etc. • (actually, you can also add bitmaps, they too can be resized, distorted etc).

  9. Drawing the basic layout • Just a few rectangles, some text, a text field and a button. • Objects are stacked up on the document in the order they are drawn. • If you want to place an object behind another one, you can change the order

  10. Grouping Objects • Several objects can be “grouped” to make a more complex object • Two objects make up the search button • Once grouped they can be treated as a single object so they can be moved, resized etc together

  11. Layers • Now we’ve got the main layout drawn, we need to draw the content over the top • To separate the stuff on top put it on another Layer • Layers stack on top of each other. The top layers obscure those underneath. They can be named to make it easier to tell what is in which layer • To avoid accidentally changing other layers they can be locked or you can use Single Layer Editing mode

  12. Layers

  13. Frames • For a design scenario frames are extremely useful • Each frame can show the interface in a specific state, as needed in the scenario, just like the napkin sketch did • Layers can be shared across frames so they appear in all frames • But which layers are switched on and off can be different in each frame

  14. Frames

  15. Frames

  16. Frames

  17. Frames

  18. Frames Frame Controls

  19. Using Layers and Frames • Build the document up in layers • Layers should group objects which logically belong with each other • In large documents naming the layers is vital • By default layers are not shared, which means that a layer can have different content on each frame. Bad Idea!!

  20. Anatomy of Fireworks…

  21. Quick Tour • The pics show the Mac OS X version, but the windows version is almost identical • The main difference is the Windows version puts the tool panels inside the main window, Mac OS doesn’t • Transferring files from one platform to the other is seamless – I routinely use both versions

  22. Main Window (Mac)

  23. Main Tool Palette Sub-select Select Scale, Skew, Distort tools Crop & Export Area tools Lasso Select Marquee Selection Magic Wand Select Brush (Freehand line) tool Pencil – single pixel freehand lines Erase Blur Rubber Stamp (Duplicate) tool Eye Dropper tool (Sample Colour) Fill Simple Lines Pen tool (Bezier Curves) Shapes (Rect, Ellipse, etc) Text Freeform tool (adjust shapes) Cutting tool Slice tool Rectangle Hotspot tool Hide slices and hotspots Show slices and hotspots Line Colour Fill Colour MDI, SDI, Fullscreen Hand tool Zoom tool

  24. Properties Viewer Properties for whole document Properties for vector object Properties for text object

  25. PNG -portable network graphics • Fireworks uses PNG as it's native format • However, it hides all the vector data etc, inside the PNG file, where no other applications can see it • If you use a Fireworks document in some other program export the frames you want first, otherwise the file will be excessively large! • You can export as GIF, JPG or PNG (and others). Typically PNG is the best format

  26. Keystrokes • Ctrl 1 = 100% zoom • Ctrl 2 = 200% zoom • Ctrl 3 = 300% zoom • Ctrl 4 = 400% zoom • Ctrl 5 = 50% zoom • v = select/select behind mode • q = scale/skew/distort mode • cursors = move selected object by one pixel • Shift+cursors = move selected object 10 pixels

  27. Questions?

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