Designing for web?

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  • Hombre_Lobo0

    I used to use photoshop for web design, but found it kinda clunky in how you feel tethered to the layers panel.

    I prefer the illustrator way of being able to directly select objects easily. Sure you can auto select in photoshop but it's not very well thought out.


    The tool I use now which is by far and away the best web design tool I've found is Fireworks. It's brilliant. Has the joy of not having to use the layers panel like illustrator, but geared way more for interface design.

    Everything is vectors, file size is tiny, you can have multiple pages in one document, you can have states of a page.

    It has a brilliant symbol library akin to flash's symbol library. illustrator has a symbol library as does photoshop (ps also has smart objects which work in a similar way), but the implementation in AI and PS is less seamless.

    You make a rounded edge rectangle in photoshop or illustrator, you have fanny about with vector points when resizing it, not in fireworks.

    When you change type alignment it doesn't throw it around like PS and AI do... Go knows why they do, it can't be hard to keep the text where it is.

    As a bonus fireworks has had in built prototyping since before 2006, so I can send prototype user journey examples with clickable links to clients. Or interactive wireframes in early stages.

    It's not surprising though, photoshop was made for photo editing, illustrator was made for vector illustrations and fireworks was made for creating interfaces.

    However fireworks has its limitations, it's gradient fill tools aren't the best. it's free hand vector tools arent quite up to illustrator standard. But for any limitations it has, it has 10x more positives than outweigh other program's.

    It's a a shame adobe are no longer continuing support for it.

    More info on why fireworks is great for web design -
    http://www.reinegger.net/50_reas…

    Hombre_Lobo 0Permalink
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    • Why isn't auto-select in PS not well thought-out?iCanHazQBN
    • Fireworks = save oftenmonNom
    • Fireworks isn't being updated in CC anymore... I would not recommend learning it if you're starting out.zarkonite
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