Fireworks for website design - why?

Question

I've used Photoshop to design (more or less) every website I've made in the past 9 or 10 years. I hear people going on about Fireworks saying that it's excellent for web design and prototyping.

When Adobe took over Macromedia, I was surprised that Fireworks survived so there must be something great about it to keep it going alongside, for what I can see, a very similar program.

Can anybody give me a good outline of the pros and cons of using Fireworks over Photoshop and the differences I'll need to know about before trying it out?

-- edit --

I'll be more interested to hear the little things that people do with it that makes it so useful over having massive articles pasted at me!

Whether or not I'll be able to 'accept' an answer, I'm not sure, but I'll certainly be upvoting anything that I find useful in my quest for knowledge. Maybe after playing with your suggestions I'll accept the one that impresses me most when using it in practice.

Answer 1

I've always used Photoshop for my web designs but am going try Fireworks after reading Andre Reinegger's excellent comparison between the two:

http://www.reinegger.net/50_reasons_not_to_use_photoshop_for_webdesign.html

I think the most relevant of his reasons are scaling without distortion, the states panel and the user interface panel.

Answer 2

Fireworks has a pretty nifty shape interface that lets you either play with the points / beziers of a shape or grab sections of the shape as if they were pixels at will. So you could make a square, grab one corner and stretch it out, and then use a marquee tool to grab and delete a square section of the opposite corner. I was really, really surprised that Adobe didn't grab this for Photoshop.

Back before you could move files as easily between Photoshop and Flash it was easier to do your graphics in Fireworks and import them to Flash, so lots of folks who were making Flash-intensive sites got used to working in Fireworks.

Answer 3

I have a love/hate relationship with Fireworks.

HATE:

• Adobe treats Fireworks like Photoshop's retarded cousin.
• It feels really unpolished and even has some bugs (out of memory is my favorite).
• When you use it you can just feel how much potential a tool like this could have. Most of the time you'll be thinking: "Wow it would be so cool to have this or this feature." Which can be really frustrating.

LOVE:

• It fills a space that not many other tools occupy.
• Easy use of pixels and vectors.
• Hotspots and easy export to html so you can quickly show your clients the flow of a website.
• Pages and limited master page support.
• It feels lightweight and is easy to learn and use.

Despise all the hate I have for Fireworks I always return to it as my main tool for mocks and website designs. My hope is that company that isn't Adobe creates a similar tools and gives it the love that it deserves.

Answer 4

depends on your need brother.

better you see this.

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/08/7-reasons-why-i-choose-fireworks-over-photoshop/

Answer 5

It is capable for both pixel and vector editing with tools optimized for the needs of the web designer and for rapid prototyping.

For me it is the best/most useful tools from both Photoshop and Illustrator combined in one intuitive and easy to learn interface. So, if you are switching from Photoshop you will probably get it all in a day. I use it regularly for making wire-frames and mock-ups since it provides a much faster workflow than the other two mentioned programs.

The cons of the program are that it lacks the advanced features of Illustrator and Photoshop, its just the basics here, but for most projects you will find them more then enough.

Answer 6

I would say all of the above and a huge jump in time saved - if you are good at Photoshop you'll definitely be great at using Fireworks. Anything that's missing in Fireworks would have to do with Photo editing in Photoshop - What we do is start the layouts with Fireworks and whenever required use Photoshop for its awesome filters and then bring the results back into Fireworks. Since the optimization for website graphics is so much better in Fireworks we end up starting and ending with exporting from Fireworks. Just jump in and I guarantee that you'll never make another website without it.

Answer 7

I would second all the points made in the article referenced in @Jack’s answer. But in addition the compression algorithms used by Fireworks are better than Photoshop’s. Fireworks gives you cleaner, smaller JPEGs.

For me the native vector support is a huge plus. The ability to rescale artwork on the fly rather than having to reimport or rasterize exterrnal files is a killer feature.

Answer 8

I'll pile on with one more reason: Fireworks' native file format is PNG.

That means I can take graphics that I create in FW and add them directly to a pages. I don't have to create multiple versions, or keep track of the original, etc.