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I'm dropping Fireworks as my main tool for web layouts. It's just too slow and Adobe isn't supporting it anymore.

Is there another tool that can do something similar to Fireworks' states? Photoshop layer comps don't do it for me. This feature is probably the reason I head over to Fireworks way too often.

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  • Can you describe the states feature a bit ... it's been a looooong time since I've looked at Fireworks. For the record, many FW users are coming over to the Sketch camp. Not total feature parity, but a whole lotta improvements from what I hear.
    – plainclothes
    May 21, 2015 at 23:01
  • @plainclothes hey dude, the states feature comes in handy when you want to try out different things or want to visualize a user-journey with mouse over states or something. you can create different states of a layout where you define specific things to be different from the other states. I often used it to showcase a user-journey for navigation elements or buttons. It's been a while since I posted this question. Atm I am working with Illustrator and I dont regret that choice. Sketch ist awesome for UI Design but sucks for web layouts that include bitmaps
    – Marten Zander
    May 21, 2015 at 23:16
  • Interesting perspective on the bitmaps concern. The only problem I ran into (when I was doing a lot of ecomm applications) was the lack of image linking. I'll add an answer that fits the Adobe ecosystem.
    – plainclothes
    May 21, 2015 at 23:22

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Illustrator layers

I've successfully used Illustrator to mock up site and application states in a collaborative environment.

The trick is highly organized use of layers.

  1. Collect all element layers of a view in a parent group.
  2. Within the parent, collect states in their own groups, including modal views.

For some things, like simple button changes, it makes sense to have the states together in the same group. The problem becomes finding those states in a complicated UI.

By using standardized and descriptive labels for the groups, anyone coming into the file can quickly assess the states of that view.

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  • Yep, that's exactly how I am dealing with the problem at the moment. I' ve also heard about a small script, that will automatically copy all elements into a new group. This is doing what you described here. When I am under time pressure I often choose to simply duplicate my artboard
    – Marten Zander
    May 22, 2015 at 7:34
  • When the state gets too complex, it can be easier to just have adjacent artboards. This is one way Sketch made me far more productive: Multiple artboards for a view, pages for multiple views.
    – plainclothes
    May 22, 2015 at 15:30

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