Chapter19.Integrating with Fireworks | Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Unleashed

Chapter 19. Integrating with Fireworks

IN THIS CHAPTER

Specifying External Editors
Editing Images in Fireworks
Optimizing Images in Fireworks
Replacing Image Placeholders Using Fireworks
Creating Buttons Using Fireworks
Using Fireworks HTML Code
Creating a Web Photo Album

Macromedia's Fireworks has grown to become one of the premier graphics editing programs used by web developers and designers alike. With features that allow for quick optimization, cropping, and resizing of images, combined with the power to make colors transparent, change contrast, and color balance, it's clear why Fireworks is quickly becoming the standard for web professionals. In fact, because of its relative simplicity, quick launching interface, and tight integration with Dreamweaver, it's easy to see why Fireworks is quickly surpassing other larger scale image-editing applications on the market today.

When was the last time you built a website for a client who thought everything was perfect the first go around? In the real world, this is never the case. Fortunately, Dreamweaver's integration with Fireworks makes it simple to quickly edit and optimize images directly from Dreamweaver using Fireworks. After you've made a change to the graphic, you click Done in Fireworks, and the image is instantly updated in Dreamweaver. Gone are the days of fumbling for original images, opening them directly in a dedicated image editing program, making changes, exporting your work, saving the original, and then re-importing the completed image into Dreamweaver.

In this chapter, we'll harness the power that Fireworks exposes directly from Dreamweaver. We'll edit and optimize images, create new images, use Fireworks HTML code, and even create a full-featured web photo album with little to no effort. To take advantage of these integration features, however, it's important to have Fireworks installed on your computer. If you don't have access to a full version of Fireworks, you can download the trial version from Macromedia's website at http://www.macromedia.com/software/fireworks.

As you've done with the rest of the chapters in this book, you can work with the examples in this chapter by downloading the files from www.dreamweaverunleashed.com. You'll want to save the files for Chapter 19 in an easy-to-find location. I'll place mine in C:\Dorknozzle\Chapter19.