Fireworks, Auto Shapes and More Cool Things
This week we were continuing working with Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004. The program gives you a lot of freedom to express your ideas. The more I work with it the more I find it to be user friendly and more intuitive than Flash, for example.
The program allows you to create various types of shapes. There are several auto shapes in Fireworks. As it is mentioned in the Help, "Auto Shapes are intelligent vector object groups that adhere to specialized rules to simplify the creation and editing of common visual elements". And it is really true. For me it is difficult to draw anything from scratch with a mouse. That is why I found these auto shapes useful in creating vector objects. I tried all of the auto shape forms. After creating a vector object you can select it and small yellow points appear around the object. They give you a lot of control in changing the shape of your object. And if you are creative, you can get new type of objects rather than drawing them from scratch. I tried changing the star, oval and arrow objects and this is what my final results were:
For my web page 8 I used the techniques shown by our small Web Team 4 - creating buttons and pop-up menus and editing text properties. As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, I wanted to try creating buttons in Fireworks. We had some experience with buttons in Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia (roll-over effects) and Flash. Fireworks allows you to control and change your button's properties very easily. You can apply a lot of effects to them. If you want to create a button in Fireworks you do basically the same operations as in Flash. To create a button from scratch you choose Edit>Insert>New symbol and choose button type. Or you can simply convert any object into button by choosing Modify>Symbol>Convert to Symbol. It is the same as in Flash; and it is very easy to apply or change over, down and other frames in Fireworks. This all worked well for me. You can add different fill modes to your buttons so they have some shadow and even 3D effect (for example, by choosing gradient fill options and adding inner bevel effect to a button):
In my web page 8 I used several text effects. For the title I used the effect of transperent text - so you can see the image "through" the text itself. I typed the text and then copied it and made it bigger. Using the magic tool I selected all the letters, saved bitmap selection and pasted it on the other text (restored bitmap selection). The result was that I was able to see through the text and see the underlying layer (image).
The program allows you to create various types of shapes. There are several auto shapes in Fireworks. As it is mentioned in the Help, "Auto Shapes are intelligent vector object groups that adhere to specialized rules to simplify the creation and editing of common visual elements". And it is really true. For me it is difficult to draw anything from scratch with a mouse. That is why I found these auto shapes useful in creating vector objects. I tried all of the auto shape forms. After creating a vector object you can select it and small yellow points appear around the object. They give you a lot of control in changing the shape of your object. And if you are creative, you can get new type of objects rather than drawing them from scratch. I tried changing the star, oval and arrow objects and this is what my final results were:
For my web page 8 I used the techniques shown by our small Web Team 4 - creating buttons and pop-up menus and editing text properties. As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, I wanted to try creating buttons in Fireworks. We had some experience with buttons in Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia (roll-over effects) and Flash. Fireworks allows you to control and change your button's properties very easily. You can apply a lot of effects to them. If you want to create a button in Fireworks you do basically the same operations as in Flash. To create a button from scratch you choose Edit>Insert>New symbol and choose button type. Or you can simply convert any object into button by choosing Modify>Symbol>Convert to Symbol. It is the same as in Flash; and it is very easy to apply or change over, down and other frames in Fireworks. This all worked well for me. You can add different fill modes to your buttons so they have some shadow and even 3D effect (for example, by choosing gradient fill options and adding inner bevel effect to a button):
In my web page 8 I used several text effects. For the title I used the effect of transperent text - so you can see the image "through" the text itself. I typed the text and then copied it and made it bigger. Using the magic tool I selected all the letters, saved bitmap selection and pasted it on the other text (restored bitmap selection). The result was that I was able to see through the text and see the underlying layer (image).
I created a draft page for my final project. The idea was to create a banner or a logo. But I have to work on it more. I also placed three buttons - and one button has pop-up menu with three links. The links do not work yet and have to be updated.
I am excited that we are learning Fireworks program. I like all the programs we have learned in this class. I think they are all useful in designing web pages.
I noticed a very interesting fact. After learning Macromedia programs I began to pay more attention to the design of the web pages. My mind now works in a different way - I am not only enjoying the cool stuff on the web but also analysing it, thinking how the pages were created, for example, if they were created in Macromedia Flash I check this by right clicking to any interesting commercial or small animation I see.
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