Top 10 Reasons Why I Use Fireworks for Website Design instead of Photoshop
This week I (Interactive Director – Matthew Nelson) gave a quick 30 minute presentation up at this month’s New England Adobe User’s Group about why I use Fireworks for the majority of my website design and mock up work. Now we all know that Photoshop is the the industry standard, and I use it almost every day, but not as much as I use Fireworks. Fireworks has been around for a long time and I have been using it for years. From time to time I find myself getting into the Photoshop vs. Fireworks debate I felt it was finally time to put it out there and explain why I still think that Fireworks is still a web designers best friend even today in 2012.
Top 10 Reasons Why Fireworks Rules
- Export Area Tool - allows you to simply export pieces of your design extremely quickly
- Setting up guides on layouts by pixel - setting up your design guides by simply entering in their location by pixel is a huge time saver
- Super quick color on/off tools - when creating layouts simply turning color on and off of layout items is very helpful to make the transition from Wireframes to final design that much quicker and more affordable
- Quick Access Gradient and Texture Tools (properties inspector) - I personally like how Fireworks makes it very quick and simple to create and edit your gradients
- Simple Masking Tools (paste inside) - not having to deal with clumsy making layers keeps mock up files clean and easy to work with
- Quick simple web tool mock up items - not having to mock up standard web elements like drop down boxes are a big time saver for mock ups
- Icon tool library - not having to create standard functionality items like search magnifying glasses, shopping cart icons is a big time time saver for me when it comes to the wireframe part of the process
- Quick access to common special characters - I hate having to try and remember all the codes for things like “trademark” and “copyright” Fireworks give you a simple quick access panel for all of them
- Lots of stock button styles to choose from - pure convenience, make it easy for me to create a nice rounded button with a decent gradient texture and let me customize from there.
- Ability to mock up multiple pages within one file
Watch a Quick Video Demo
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Reason 11: Because Fireworks is actually built (and marketed) as a web design tool, whereas Photoshop is really just anything.
Thanks for the addition to the list Mike!
I just find that lots of designers that I run into don’t actually know that, or are unwilling to give it a try, my hope was this list would convert more users to give it a try.
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