Page 1 of 5 Well it's official: Fireworks CS4 is coming! And with it, some noticeable changes to Fireworks, from the interface on up. Let's take a look at what's new and where applicable, I will point you to articles on the Fireworks Public Beta, which cover many features in more detail.
Adobe has been carving out a niche for Fireworks as a rapid prototyping tool. I'd venture to say this extends to a more general description of a rapid design tool for screen graphics.
Adobe breaks down the updates into the following categories:
I don't have a bleeding edge machine, but I can say that I can access Fireworks much more quickly than I could with CS3. There was always a lag in CS3 before anything in the application was accessible.
Asynchronous Saving is another much needed enhancement. As files get more complex, they can take longer to save. In earlier versions of Fireworks, this meant you had to wait for FW to finish saving before you could do anything else. Now, you can open and work on another file while one is being saved. You will also see a progress bar below the document window so you will know exactly when the file has finished saving.
Figure 1 - Fireworks save progress bar.
Fireworks has had a major facelift—and I think, overall, it's for the better. Many of the Adobe Creative Suite applications now share a common interface, so it should be easier for you to move from one application to another and not have to relearn the GUI. For Mac users, you will have two interface options; the classic Mac OS look with floating panels and windows, or the Application Frame which puts Fireworks into a single main window, much like you would experience on the Microsoft Windows OS.
Figure 2 - Fireworks updated interface on the PC
The workspace is now more customizable than ever before. For more details on the Interface, check out Fireworks CS4 Public Beta- Part 1: Fireworks Gets a Facelift! and Fireworks CS4 Public Beta - Part 4: Panels. One truly time-saving feature is the ability to right-click within the Pages, Layers and States panels and open a context menu.
New additions since the Beta include a help search bar found at the top of the application. Some new menu items have been added as well, including (yay!) a Kuler Panel. You'll find this panel under Window > Extensions > Kuler.
Figure 3 - The new Kuler panel is now integrated into Fireworks
Keywords
Fireworks CS4, productivity, work flow, prototyping
