Existing Extensions


Several notable extensions take advantage of the power contained within FWLaunch.dll. One standard command, Create Web Photo Album, uses Fireworks to batch process a series of images into thumbnails; a more enhanced version of this command (Web Photo Album 2.0) is available on the Dreamweaver Exchange under the Productivity category. Also on the Exchange is a suite of three cross-application extensions known collectively as the InstaGraphics Extensions:

NOTE

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I authored two Dreamweaver-to-Fireworks commands that evolved into Convert Text to Graphics and Convert Bullets to Graphics. Macromedia took over and enhanced my initial commands, named StyleBuilder and BulletBuilder respectively, to be incorporated into the InstaGraphics extension.


  • Convert Text to Graphics ” Takes selected text or text within specific tags (h1 “h6 or any custom tag) and renders it in the font, font size , and Fireworks style of your choosing. After the graphic is completed, both the exported GIF and source PNG files are stored.

  • Convert Bullets to Graphics ” Changes HTML unordered list items to standard text and replaces the bullets with one of 10 different graphics shapes (star, diamond, triangle, and so on) in any Fireworks style in a user -selected size. The command can be applied to a single list, as shown in Figure 7.2, or in all the lists on the page.

    Figure 7.2. Both the Convert Text to Graphics and the Convert Bullets to Graphics commands (shown here) have the ability to incorporate custom Fireworks styles via the Update Styles button.

    graphics/07fig02.gif

  • Fireworks Button Object ” Makes graphics buttons with user-defined text according to predesigned or custom templates. All buttons generated have simple, two-state rollover behaviors automatically attached; again, both the exported file and the source file are saved for easy editing.

All of these Dreamweaver extensions use the same basic technique for cross-application communication with Fireworks ”and they all take advantage of Fireworks capabilities exposed through its Document Object Model (DOM) and API. As you'll see in the following section, these extensions all use a single function call contained within the FWLaunch DLL ” FWexec() ”to control Fireworks.



Joseph Lowery's Beyond Dreamweaver
Joseph Lowerys Beyond Dreamweaver
ISBN: B000H2MWYS
EAN: N/A
Year: 2001
Pages: 87
Authors: Joseph Lowery

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