Fireworks

Tutorials and export html question...

[JoshS]

Hello,

I recently got Macromedia's Web Design Studio package which includes Fireworks. I'm impressed and very overwhelmed at it's capabilities! Does anyone know of any good online tutorials to help me learn how to use Fireworks (and any other Macromedia programs like Flash, etc)? I've already completed the Lessons and Tutorial that come with the program, but it looks like those barely scratched the surface.

Also, do you professional users use the "Export to html" feature? How does Fireworks' html compare with handcoding...is it messy? It looks like it could be useful for static sites, but not real conducive if you use includes, php, or database driven sites.

Thanks!

Josh

[toolman]

Fireworks is killer for web design. Old timers and print people will always stick with PS but FW is good for web work. Some good stuff to get you going. Download some of the extensions...thats one of the greatest things about FW.

[playingwithfire.com...]
[projectfireworks.com...]

[mivox]

As an "old timer" (rofl) who uses PhotoShop (and doesn't have first-hand FW experience), and has played around with a number of auto-generated HTML features in graphics programs... I have yet to see a single graphics program that generates HTML or Javascript as well as a dedicated HTML program or good hand coding.

If you're using Dreamweaver for your html, it would be pretty easy for you to compare Fireworks' HTML output with Dreamweaver's... I'd be interested to hear about the outcome.

[JoshS]

Thanks for the links, toolman!

mivox...I don't (haven't) used Dreamweaver, so I can't compare. I do most of my html by hand. I can send you a couple links to some Fireworks generated html pages if you want to take a look...

[Michael Weir]

Desiging nice looking sites is easily done with PS - chopping them up into segments and exporting them to DW can be a hassle.

[mivox]

Well, if you code by hand, I'd probably stick with that. Use graphics programs for what they're good at: graphics. ;)

[toolman]

Fireworks is a good tool to do layout and it exports slices directly into DW...then you can clean it up.

[hasbeen]

There is some extraneous code. For example, comment tags like:

<!-- fwtable fwsrc="Untitled" fwbase="Homepage" fwstyle="Dreamweaver" fwdocid = "742308039" fwnested="0" -->

and if you're slicing up objects, the _r1_c1, _r1_c2 stuff can get a tad cluttered. I've used Fireworks to mock up layouts, then only slice the images that I want to use and code the rest rather than just exporting slices, html and all and using those for submissions/uploading. I use UltraDev for the actual layout and haven't had any problems moving between the two. My advice is code outside of Fireworks/Photoshop as much as possible and do what Mivox said: leave graphics programs to what they're good at.