Adobe Fireworks CS4 Upgrade

Smart Guides display both position coordinates and relative guides to help you precisely align graphic elements in your design. Click to enlarge.

Upgrade to Adobe Fireworks CS4

Top reasons to upgrade to Adobe Fireworks CS4

Improved performance
Work faster and smarter with overall performance enhancements, from file opening and saving to symbol updates and intensive bitmap and vector operations.

New user interface
Easily switch from other Adobe Creative Suite 4 components--such as Adobe Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS4, and Flash CS4 Professional--thanks to a universal user interface design.

CSS export
Design complete web pages in a robust graphic environment and then export standards-compliant, CSS-based layouts, complete with external style sheets, in one step. Integrate foreground and background graphics with new slice types.

PDF export
Generate high-fidelity, protected PDF documents from your Fireworks comps for client communication. Help safeguard your designs with password protection--separate passwords can be created for viewing and other tasks such as printing, copying, and commenting.

Fireworks CS4 gives you the performance edge you need to quickly load and store the comp for an entire website in a single file, as shown here in the Pages panel. Click to enlarge.

The Path panel, which offers enhanced vector editing capability, is just one of the many revised panels in Fireworks CS4. Click to enlarge.

When exported with the new CSS and Images option, the car image will be linked from a CSS rule, rather than as an "img" tag in the HTML, because the slice type is set to Background Image. Click to enlarge.

Enhanced type handling
Produce exceptional type designs with the enhanced typesetting capabilities of the Adobe text engine. Import or copy/paste double-byte characters from Illustrator (CS3 or CS4) and Photoshop (CS3 or CS4) without loss of fidelity. Float text inside a path for high-impact logos.

Workspace improvements
Quickly place Smart Guides on your canvas for swift, accurate positioning and measurement of guides and elements. Edit symbols in place for precise symbol refinement in context with the rest of your design.

Adobe Kuler integration
Access the latest color themes from the Adobe Kuler web-hosted service right in Fireworks to sample and apply to your web designs. Craft color harmonies for your own use or to upload to Kuler.

Adobe ConnectNow integration
Connect client to designer for a real-time online meeting with full-screen sharing across platforms and the country with the Adobe ConnectNow service.

Adobe AIR authoring
Create your Adobe AIR prototype directly within Fireworks, ready to be deployed to HTML and CSS, Flex, or SWF. Easily convert your click-through mock-up.

Styles panel upgrades
Work more efficiently with the enhanced Styles panel. With the click of an icon, choose between default Fireworks styles, current document styles, or styles from other libraries. Multiple style sets can easily be accessed.

Top new features of Fireworks CS4

Improved performance and stability
Work faster and smarter, with Fireworks CS4 performance enhancements throughout the application. Fireworks CS4 boasts faster document opening and saving for files large and small, including those with a great number of pages, states, layers, and symbols. File saving is now an asynchronous operation, so designers can get back to work while storing a large file. Symbol updating is more robust, as are intensive bitmap and vector operations. With its improved system responsiveness, Fireworks CS4 gives you the power to prototype your designs faster than ever.

New user interface
The new look and feel of Fireworks CS4 is far more than just a designer-friendly overhaul. It now shares a common interface with other Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web and Design components, from Photoshop and Illustrator to Flash and Dreamweaver. Maintain common workspace layouts and tools as you move smoothly between Fireworks and any other Creative Suite 4 component. The user interface enhancements aren't just skin-deep either: Pages, States, and Layers panels are now easier to use, with right-click menu additions and all commands and command panels upgraded for greater ease of use.

CSS- and images-based export
Design complete web pages in the robust graphic environment of Fireworks, and then export web-standards compliant, CSS-based layouts--complete with external style sheets--all in one step. Integrate foreground and background graphics with the new slice types where you have the option to set your background slices to repeat along X or Y coordinates or not repeat at all. Drop form-element-rich symbols like checkboxes, text fields, and Submit buttons onto your Fireworks layouts to output well-built HTML code.

Once you've exported your Fireworks CS4 comp to PDF, your client can add their comments through Adobe Reader or Acrobat software. Click to enlarge.

Set headline and body type more precisely in Fireworks CS4 with the revised Properties panel (shown here) and the updated Adobe text engine. Click to enlarge.

Symbols in Fireworks CS4 have been greatly improved to allow you to make design updates more efficiently. In the top figure, all three blue crosses are symbols. The bottom figure illustrates the edit-in-place feature where the middle cross has been double-clicked and the fill color is changed to a more noticeable red. Changes to one symbol are instantly applied to related symbols. Click to enlarge.

PDF export
Deliver the preciseness of your Fireworks CS4 design comps directly to your clients with the new Export To PDF feature. Export any range of pages in your Fireworks document with fidelity using a single command. The PDF document maintains hotspot-linked pages, creating interactive electronic comps that are viewable by anyone with Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat software: All the functionality of the Reader editing capabilities can be accessed for collaboration and iteration of your web design. You can safeguard your designs with optional password protection--separate passwords are definable for viewing and for other tasks such as copying, commenting, and printing.

Adobe text engine
The enhanced typographical capabilities familiar to users of Photoshop and Illustrator are now implemented in the text engine of Fireworks CS4. Set type easily and intuitively; you can get the same elegant results whether you start from scratch or import text. You can even import or copy and paste double-byte characters from Adobe InDesign software, Ilustrator, or Photoshop without loss of fidelity. The Adobe text engine improvements also let you bring Photoshop PSD files into Fireworks CS4 with fully editable text. Designers will further appreciate the new ability to float text inside a path to quickly simulate text floating around an image in CSS layouts.

Style improvements
Styles are an important asset in any designer's toolbox, allowing consistent color, effects, and text attributes to be applied easily. The improved styles feature in Fireworks CS4 lifts this functionality to new heights. Now, when you modify a style, all elements to which the style has been applied are immediately updated. And you can break individual instances away from the style with the click of a Properties panel icon.

Additionally, Fireworks CS4 supports multiple style sets. Designers can quickly switch between various style sets, whether standard or custom. The Styles panel, enhanced for Fireworks CS4, includes pull-down menus which display all open documents and their style sets for rapid application.

Symbol enhancements
Fireworks CS4 symbols have also taken a big step forward with in-place editing--modifying the symbol without having to jump to a separate window. Now you can precisely refine your symbol while keeping an eye on the larger picture of your canvas. Moreover, one of the most valuable features of symbol editing, 9-slice scaling, is now available for any type of object--pixel, vector, group, or text area. Symbol properties are now even more robust with support of nested symbols (one symbol inside another) in Fireworks CS4.

Workspace improvements
Turn on Smart Guides for swift, accurate positioning and measurement of guides and elements on the canvas. Smart Guides offer a heads-up feature that shows where you are in relation to other objects as you drag guides into position, as well as displaying their current X and Y coordinates. Press Shift while adjusting your guides to view dynamically updated distances between canvas edges and existing guides in the same plane.

Adobe Kuler
Inspirational color review and creation comes to Fireworks CS4. Adobe Kuler is a popular web-hosted application and online color community where designers can create and store color sets to share or keep handy for their own use. With the Kuler panel in Fireworks CS4, you can find, sample, and apply the latest color themes from Adobe Kuler. Having Adobe Kuler accessible in Fireworks CS4 gives you the opportunity to craft color harmonies for your own use or to upload to Adobe Kuler, without leaving your design space.

Re-organize your files to compare and contrast pages in a website side-by-side. With the workspace enhancements in Fireworks CS4, you can even put two tabbed file groups next to each other. Click to enlarge.

Through the Create tab of the Adobe Kuler panel in Fireworks CS4 you can set the primary color, like the rich orange here, and discover other analogous colors to use on the page. Click to enlarge.

Re-use page elements from your site design to prototype an interactive AIR application. Click to enlarge.

Adobe ConnectNow, a service of Acrobat.com
Designers often need to discuss comps and layouts with their clients to iron out specific details, but face-to-face meetings can be costly and e-mail communication is often too slow. Fireworks CS4 brings clients and designers together for real-time online meetings through its connection with Adobe ConnectNow, one of the services offered on Acrobat.com. Now you can meet live over the web to share your screen, present creative concepts and prototypes, and brainstorm with up to two online guests for no additional service charge. To share your screen with colleagues and clients, choose File > Share My Screen. Guests can then see your desktop on their screens as you work. You can exchange ideas using the chat pod, add a live video or audio feed, or use the Whiteboard feature to enable guests to comment on content. You can even temporarily hand over control of the screen to a guest to collaborate on a file. Additional Acrobat.com services, such as Share, Create PDF, My Files, and Adobe Buzzword, are accessible via your web browser. (Internet connection required.)

Adobe AIR authoring
Preview and package your Adobe AIR interactive prototype directly from within Fireworks CS4, ready to be delivered to HTML and CSS, Flex, or Flash. Pages and states in Fireworks CS4 map exactly to an interactive Adobe AIR application experience, so you can quickly convert your click-through mock-up to a fully designed prototype. Distribute the prototype to clients or colleagues for approval and move it into application development more rapidly.

Creative Pro Online Services

Adobe Community Help
Get the power of an online search engine within your Creative Suite 4 software, but with more targeted results thanks to Adobe Community Help. Searchable content includes the in-depth product-specific Help Adobe has always delivered, plus additional Adobe and third-party content chosen by experts at Adobe and in the design and production communities. With Adobe Community Help, you can find the focused answers you need, fast. Simply choose Help > Fireworks Help. (Internet connection required for extended content.)

Adobe Bridge Home
Visit Bridge Home--an online channel available in Adobe Bridge CS4--and stay up to date with what's new from Adobe and the design, web development, and video and audio production communities at large. Watch the latest video tutorials for your Creative Suite 4 software, listen to a podcast interview with a leading designer, or learn about the next training event in your community. Discover tips and resources that can help you work smarter and faster, making the most of your Creative Suite 4 software. (Internet connection required.)

Part of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 family