Fireworks MX Rocks

The Studio Gallery is based on the existing design of the Art Department. Unfortunely, the designer that worked on the Art Department site is no longer working for Vassar and the original Photoshop files were gone with him as well. Thanks to Fireworks MX, I was able to edit the graphics right in Dreamweaver MX. It was a big time saver.

Software Battles

Digital Web Magazine has an article on GoLive 6 vs. Dreamweaver MX battle. Of course, Dreamweaver is the winner. While we’re on the software battles subject. Here are my picks:

Fireworks MX vs. Photoshop 7. Here is a tough call because I use them both. No doubt in my mind that Photoshop is the industry standard designers tool. Everyone uses it either for print, web, photography and multimedia. On the other hand, Fireworks focuses mainly for the web and it does an excellent job at it. One of the benefit of Fireworks is its seemless intergration with Dreamweaver and Flash. As far as popularity, I think I am the only one uses Fireworks in our web studio at Vassar. Everyone else has his/her copy still wrapped up on the shelf.

Freehand MX vs. Illustrator 10. Here is another tough call because I rearly use either one of them. As a matter of fact, the only time I use them is when I work with graphic designers/illustrators who use Freehand/Illustrator and I have to covert their artwork for the web or Flash animation. Since I can’t draw complicated vector artwork, Flash simple drawing tools work fine for me with what I need to do. However, I know a lot of designers prefer Illustrator over Freehand. Ask Keisha, she’ll tell you why. She is an expert in Illustrator.

Flash MX vs. LiveMotion 2. Obviously, Flash is way a head of the game with ActionScript. LiveMotion would be great if intros were still hot. Unfortunately, intros are history now.

Window vs. Mac. This is not a software battle but operating system battle. Came from Window background and hated Mac OS. Came to Vassar and was forced to use Mac. Fortunately, Mac OS X rocks and I am loving it. Although I use both but I prefer Mac now. However, I prefer Mac OS X and above only. I still hate Mac older versions. It’s such a pain.