i remember opening up fireworks a few times during my early college days to modify a gif file. other than those few times, i’ve never used fireworks for anything else. all of my design work was done either in photoshop, illustrator or a combination of both. it was just my comfort level. if i needed to do vectors, i had illustrator. if i needed to do layout, i had photoshop. so what about fireworks, the program that has a decent combination of both? i know several other designers who live by fireworks. i would never use it myself, but i wouldn’t bash on them using fireworks either. stolen from this place, here are a few reasons why:
the perfect mix of rasters and vectors
fireworks had vector tools long before photoshop did. photoshop eventually did include vectors, but the first iteration was horrid and completely unusable compared to Fireworks. fireworks perfectly blends the features of photoshop and Illustrator that pertain most to web designers.
precision
in fireworks, if you select any object you get the exact height and width and x/y coordinates. that’s on an object level. this is extremely valuable when prototyping.
png output
fireworks saves in the open PNG format. PNG is small compared to psd and can be displayed in web browsers. macromedia made it possible being able to share native fireworks source files with clients over the web, being able to make modifications and save, and then having the client see those changes on a refresh. no exporting necessary.
it’s all about your comfort level
a longtime photoshop user to switching to fireworks would be about as absurd as them switching to photoshop. when it comes down to it, it’s all about what you’re comfortable using. every person is productive in different ways. for me? it’s photoshop. for others, it could be fireworks. it could be GIMP. it could be paint. it could be whatever you want. just get the job done and get it done right…with photoshop. =)
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