5 Things I Love About Adobe Fireworks for Designing Websites

[daProfesionalologist]

Awesome page Mike, and great tutorial! Can these files be uploaded Dreamweaver, or can they be directly uploaded to a server in Fireworks?

[Obox2550]

Hey quick question. How did you make that search box in the top right corner and does it actually work? Thanks

[pyroneph]

that website design makes me weep joyful tears

[BCWebPros]

Hi Mike, great video! Just subscribed. I'm a self taught web and graphic designer/developer and I really appreciate people doing videos like these to help each other out. I use photoshop and dream weaver, tried to learn fireworks but it will take time to switch. Any idea how to make the paint bucket tool work when you draw lines and try to fill it? I assumed it would work like most of the adobe programs, but I couldn't get it to work. Not embarrassed to sound like a noob lol

[akhmeddd]

@zHyngeDesigns

illustartor and photoshop and Indesign in one :)

[MRBETFANATIC]

@akhmeddd so basically if you have fireworks then you dont need these individually?

[wadehjb]

Are there many (or any) advantages of Fireworks over Indesign? If you design your site in Fireworks, can you export as a functional HTML site without going into Dreamweaver?

[Lessep922]

@wadehjb Yes! and creative interacitve too..!

[mlwebco]

@zHyngeDesigns Pretty much ;)

[salv2000vids]

I have been a Photoshop / Dreamweaver guy... I am liking the work flow of Fireworks that you demo.. do you use dreamweaver at all?

[mlwebco]

@salv2000vids I use dreamweaver, but only as an HTML editor.

[Metalaseylypse]

Hey Mike, I'm updating my site again using fireworks and am running into this problem with pasting gradients from Illustrator. Other solid colours and fonts paste in but this particular gradient doesn't appear. What causes that usually?

Hey btw your recommendation to use fireworks has helped tons for making my site. When I started using it I could tell right away this is THE way to set up web pages. Thanks and keep up the tuts, they've been super.

[mlwebco]

@Metalaseylypse Hey, you're welcome. Generally, gradients are very tricky in terms of working the same across the different adobe products. Like some gradients and masking doesn't copy well from photoshop to fireworks and vice versa. Same with copying/pasting from illustrator. Not sure what the cause of this other than just being different applications. I would just create the gradient effect in Fireworks, it supports vector editing so it should be able to achieve any gradient effect. ;)

[njmithra]

Now I have a reason to install Fireworks. Looks like a very positive workflow. Perfect video.

[FrillyPinkMonster]

Awesome, I have been considering making a jump to Fireworks and now I may finally have an excuse. The features seem just mind blowing to me, kind of like a wonderful mix of Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator.

[mlwebco]

@FrillyPinkMonster Exactly ;)

[abeerhkhan]

Hey Mike, I have a question for you. Whenever I use some font that I download from some site in my web design the preview seems perfect but when I save the file as html and then preview it, it shows me a text box saying "please use any other default font", is there any way to overcome that problem.

Help needed

[mlwebco]

@abeerhkhan When using fonts on your website design, I would advise to always stick with Arial, Times Roman, Georgia and/or Verdana. It's ok to use creative fonts for images and things (that's no problem). But if you're converting your text to HTML, I always stick with Arial and Georgia for the most part. You can use web fonts (which I explained in another video), but be careful as web fonts do take time to load. So use them sparingly.

[abeerhkhan]

@mlwebco Thanks dear, that would help.

[ferretage]

Thanks for the video - picked up some new tips there :)

[sebasdavila]

Mike as I once emailed you, thanks for your time! this vids help us a lot. God bless you

[historicschools]

Great tutorial. Thanks for sharing.

[gladeemarie]

Thanks Mike. You have great patients in explaining things and make it very easy to understand. Wish I had you as a full time teacher... some of my college instructors kinda sucks. Sorry to say but I'm just being honest. I started of in photoshop but get a bit lost when I attempt Fireworks with a project. I wanna put more effort into learning it b/c it does seem far less complex than Photoshop.

[mlwebco]

@gladeemarie Hey, thanks for the comments. I hope to continue teaching so hopefully one day I'll become "official". Don't worry about switching to fireworks if you're already comfy in photoshop. I always tell people you should stay where you're more comfortable. In the end, the outcome is all the same regardless of what you use to create the graphics. ;)

[soundscapenyc]

always love your tutorials Mike...very inspiring...Thanks! keep em comin!

[mlwebco]

@soundscapenyc Thanks for the positive feedback, much appreciated.

[Maxsdiscos]

do you prefer Fireworks to Dreamweaver?

[mlwebco]

@Maxsdiscos Fireworks is the tool you use to design your websites and Dreamweaver is the tool used to code and convert your design to HTML/CSS. Fireworks is for designing and Dreamweaver is for development. They're made to work with each other.

[Maxsdiscos]

@mlwebco ah right. I thought Fw/Ai were just for graphics, and Dreamweaver built sites.

[FireworksFormat]

Hi Mike, love your videos...especially the one named "How to Export from Adobe Fireworks to Dreamweaver HTML"

Is there a way to reposition the div tags for html text?

[mlwebco]

@FireworksFormat Repositioning div tags is usually done using the float property with css, also using margin and padding to space divs apart. Do a search on the web for "positioning divs" and you'll find some great examples. ;)

[FireworksFormat]

@mlwebco Brilliant, thanks Mike :)

[vdunown]

Wow Mike. That seems perfect for a web designer! Im going to give it a try.

[therealcharismatron]

Very nice. I'd heard of this but had no idea what it actually was. Looking forward to your next clip.

[killall217]

Some questions:

How much average do you make per website + monthly/weekly repair chargers?

Are you using a domain portal, if so what host are you currently using?

Approximately how long does it take you to complete an average side website?

[mlwebco]

@killall217 What you can make and charge will vary for each designer. For websites, I normally start at about $2500. For repairs and updates, I charge an hourly rate of $75/hr. I use Lunarpages to host my personal site. And a website normally takes about 4 to 6 weeks for a standard site with no heavy requirements.

[ruusky415]

Thanks great vid as always