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Adobe Illustrator 28 articles. Adobe Photoshop 13 articles. Bootstrap 31 articles. CSS3 47 articles. Fireworks wasn't given enough dedication since it's born. People simply don't know what Fireworks can offer them, and do webdesign in Photoshop or even Illustrator what is oddly. Fireworks was never advertised as good as Photoshop and it was so frustrating to see that Photoshop started to become an all-in-one software and Fireworks lacked support. Such a piece of software Photoshop doesn't have future if it's bundled with everything.
It will be too overwhelmed with different options and features - as the consequence, too complicated to use, huge in memory usage and so on. I know, you are aware of all these reasons. And that is why I'm completely confused about your decision to abandon Fireworks You have such a great software like Dreamweaver, Indesign, Illustrator and so on.
Talented engineers, evangelists. Or Sketch? Or InDesign? Or Pixelmator? Photoshop is the elephant in the room most obvious example. It was created for photo editing and print design tasks. A few UI design features were later added to it, yet Photoshop still lacks many features that would make it really useful and easy to use for screen design. Still, thousands if not millions of users worldwide have been working with this imperfect tool for more than a decade and use it successfully for UI design tasks.
Fireworks, on the other hand, was built from the ground up for UI and screen design, and every single feature in it is intended specifically to help the UI designer. And yes, Fireworks has a few weaknesses. Its color picker feels a bit old. If you work with too many pages or symbols in one document, Fireworks can feel a bit slow. Bugs do appear randomly and then disappear. And so on. UI designers need the right tool for the job, not the perfect one , and Fireworks manages to be the right tool most of the time.
Finally, there are probably a few features that Fireworks does not have but that would make it even more useful to designers and developers. While Adobe will not likely add any more features, the great community of developers will continue adding extensions to the app, keeping it up to date for quite some time. Kawasaki Vulcan vector illustration , by Isabel Aracama.
Nikon iOS icon , by Gianluca Divisi. Social bar UI design , by Lorenzo Franchini. Expenses app UI design , by Lorenzo Franchini. Restaurant navigation UI design , by Tomas Gajar. Sample navigation UI design , by Tomas Gajar. While the article is three years old now, the examples in it are still relevant, and you can take a quick look if interested. One aspect of Fireworks makes it even more powerful and deserves special mention: extensions.
Extensions are written in JavaScript, run directly in Fireworks, and add new features to make the app better and more productive. Extensions can be written to do almost anything, making it possible to configure Fireworks to be exactly the tool you need!
We have published an excellent series of articles, by Ashish Bogawat, that cover in depth some of the best extensions for Fireworks: part 1 , part 2 , part 3. Also worth mentioning is Project Phoenix , where many indispensable Fireworks extensions are frequently improved and updated!
Which extensions work the best for you and help you the most? Share them with us in the comments! These articles could prove very useful to you, and they showcase some powerful workflows in the app. While it competes partly with Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch and other tools, Fireworks is a great tool and still relevant, and it offers a modern, powerful workflow for all kinds of screen design, even today.
Which apps might replace Fireworks today or tomorrow? Many people say that Sketch is great, but it still has a few limitations and lacks many of the features of Fireworks. And unfortunately, it runs only on a Mac. These three fairly recent articles shed more light on Sketch and its features:. Sketch is quite powerful for UI design.
This vector illustration was made entirely with Sketch by the talented designer Isabel Aracama. Antetype is an interesting alternative, as is Pixelmator. Unfortunately, both are Mac-only, too. PC Pro has a quick review of it. EvolveUI should address many of our modern screen design needs such as combined vector and bitmap tools, styles, symbols, the ability to build interactive prototypes, etc.
Bonus points: The app will be open-source and available on all platforms Windows, Mac and Linux. A Kickstarter project supports it, and the first version for Mac and Windows should be available in early This app looks promising, too, but unfortunately, it might not replace Fireworks because it will lack vector and bitmap editing tools, and it will be more like InDesign for the Web than a full-featured screen design app.
As far as I know, Adobe is not working on a replacement. However, moving features into other apps is not really a replacement — it just means that designers will be spending more time working across multiple apps. Last-minute update : It seems that Adobe is working on a new design tool that could replace Fireworks in the future. If you currently rely on Fireworks for UI design but have recently discovered an app that suits you better and that might replace Fireworks for you, please let us know in the comments.
What are our plans, you may ask? For now, we will keep the Fireworks section open. Many designers out there continue to rely on Fireworks and use it. And, with the promise from Adobe to keep Fireworks available for some time longer, it seems that anyone using Fireworks today is still safe.
Of course, we, too, are exploring alternatives! New tools are emerging every day, and sooner or later a better tool will be created by some talented people who really understand how we design for the screen. Another is Project EvolveUI , which is very promising but still in alpha. Finally, thank you to the amazing Fireworks community, a community driven by passion and one that makes Fireworks so much better through the contribution of free extensions, useful articles and tutorials — and love!
You guys rock! Special thanks to Dave Hogue currently UX Design Manager at Google , who helped me with this article and who has been involved in the Fireworks community around the world for many years.
Just the things you can actually use. Everything TypeScript, with code walkthroughs and examples. And other printed books. About The Author Michel is a freelance editor and has been a contributing editor at Smashing Magazine since Email Newsletter Your smashing email.
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