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The End of Fireworks CS

Surely you saw this coming?

I heard the rumors, but I was exhaling in relief, taking in the news of the launch of Adobe CC packages and working out how much I could get the latest Fireworks for per month, when I saw the first tweets come in about the announcement.

Now before you write me off as another jaded Fireworks fanboy, which maybe I am. I used to use and still do love Photoshop. It was one of the most used and most comfortable pieces of software I have ever used. I knew more keyboard shortcuts than I collectively know for any of my other software.

I even wrote about my experience with moving to Fireworks. Moving over hasn’t been straightforward and I haven’t attained the same oneness and flow that I had with Photoshop. But with that in mind, and this I do share this with the Fireworks evangelists, it was THE tool for web and ui design. Fireworks wins, not Photoshop, unquestionably for me.

I can see where they are coming from

I can see an argument from Adobes point of view in that they cant control the market and push or force designers to use Fireworks. Why would or should they? The market practically dictates that Photoshop is the tool for web designing. That remaining the case, I can see it makes no sense for them to continue to maintain two products with an overlap of feature, fighting for the same customer base.

However…

If I were feeling cynical, and I am. It could be that Fireworks ability to cover many bases made it a target. It enabled easy wireframing, vector  and limited bitmap editing, [basic] html and css output.

Adobe thou wants you on the highest tier they can push you to. Take away Fw and you have to start thinking about other specific packages to tackle those tasks. You now need the expensive tier for that.

There was a future where Adobe made THE ultimate web designers tool it may not even have been Fireworks - but evolved from it. Now its likely to be a collection of apps. I dont mind Creative Cloud, its clearly the way forward. But this feels like it was a step backward. 

So are you going back to Photoshop?

I still need to do some thinking, but I think Adobe would have to make Muse more Pro focused to give a Fireworks feel and I might be interested in that. I could go back to Photoshop I guess.

Sketch, by Bohemian Coding, is starting to look much more appealing too. I can adjust.

Goodbye Fireworks.

Much Content? A script to display the percentage of page content vs comments. See a massive scroll bar when you visit a page? ‘Much Content?’, is piece of javascript that can display how much of the page is content vs comments. Great for turning into a browser add-on or bookmarklet, or for site owners to inform people of their content breakdown. Check it out on my codepen.

Much Content?

A script to display the percentage of page content vs comments.

See a massive scroll bar when you visit a page? ‘Much Content?’, is piece of javascript that can display how much of the page is content vs comments. Great for turning into a browser add-on or bookmarklet, or for site owners to inform people of their content breakdown.

Check it out on my codepen.

Print Theme Customisations

Gallery of some unique theme customisations [Click thumbnails to zoom] that Tumblr users of ‘Print Theme’ have made to my theme.

  1. Kaththecrapout [http://kaththecrapout.tumblr.com]
  2. Stephanie Judy [http://stephaniejudy.tumblr.com]
  3. NOT A FASHION [http://notafashion.tumblr.com]

As you can see a header image and tasteful use of colour and texture can make a very bold impression. Below the surface Print Theme is a solid 2 column Tumblog theme and these users have taken it and made it their own. I encourage you to do the same.

My original 2006 site design I thought all traces of the my original original site design had been lost to the sands of time [computer failures and backup lessons learned] but I rediscovered the template files for my original website design from 2006. The thumbnail grid shown is marked up with a table and had no indentation for readability. That’s the only way I knew how to roll back in ‘06. I must have read an article on SEO and content, as there are a lot of pages there. The site was based on the MrSite service and one of their templates while I got to grips with html.  You can see the progression in a previous post announcing my latest redesign. Or visit paulfosterdesign present day, to compare and contrast.

My original 2006 site design

I thought all traces of the my original original site design had been lost to the sands of time [computer failures and backup lessons learned] but I rediscovered the template files for my original website design from 2006.

The thumbnail grid shown is marked up with a table and had no indentation for readability. That’s the only way I knew how to roll back in ‘06. I must have read an article on SEO and content, as there are a lot of pages there. The site was based on the MrSite service and one of their templates while I got to grips with html. 

You can see the progression in a previous post announcing my latest redesign. Or visit paulfosterdesign present day, to compare and contrast.

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