Decaflon

I use Fireworks all the time. Nothing else has a slicing engine quite like it and it's really annoying (now that I've moved to Linux - because it runs like a slaaag).

Its happy-go-lucky vector imaging is pretty nice for mocking things up too. It's all in pixels so things always line up nicely... The problems are: really nice gradients, special filtered overlays and thinner-than-1px borders...

For those I usually export what I've done in Fireworks to Illustrator, which is a hell of a lot more fiddley for webdev but it gives a nice look. Then I ship it back to Fireworks for slicing.

What prompted your move to Linux?

Big question... Mainly because it's better. The underpinnings are solid and the desktop is improving at a truly amazing rate. There are also some (what I consider) "best of breed" golden applications which only really run on Linux (Amarok, gedit, gnome-sudoku).

Plus I believe Linux is going to be the mainstream desktop OS. I'm doing all I can to report all the bugs I can and suggest ways of improving things.

I run Windows games (and some applications) through Wine, and Visual Studio (for when I need to do .net development) and Adobe design software through XP on VMWare.

But the turning point was the accumulation of 8-9 months of Vista under my belt. I could tell that some things had improved since XP but the performance regressions are terrible, the usability benefits are minimal and in all the time I was using it, very few things on Microsoft's side were improved.

If anything, early adopters were punished because we bought the Business SKU before any of the others were available... To upgrade from Business to Ultimate you have to pay the FULL upgrade price - the same as if you were upgrading from XP. A bit of a slap in the face.

I started looking at Ubuntu in 2006, about the same time that I started looking at the Vista Betas. To put things in perspective, in the time it took Vista to go from Beta 1 to Final, Canonical developed and released 3 major builds of Ubuntu. In the following months as I was using Vista, they released another two major versions.

I'm now on the *next* version (in development) and it's *even* better. I said I believe, and I mean it. I believe that Linux will surpass Windows in almost every conceivable way by the time Microsoft squeeze out the next floater (2009-2011 - where there will have been 3-7 major releases of Ubuntu - assuming there's little slippage).

I can say that with conviction because I've seen what Canonical (and the rest of Linux) can do in 3 years compared to 5 years for Microsoft.

And, while I'm in rant-mode, I can see that Microsoft are trying to strip down the internal kernel and get things optimised. They've made something called MinWin taking up ~25megs of storage and ~40megs of runtime RAM for a command-line only interface.

That's impressive for Window but Linux stripped down Linux requires:
- about a quarter of a floppy and 4megs of RAM for CLI
- or the entire floppy and 16megs of RAM for a graphical interface...

I mean kudos to MS for trying to reverse some of their bloat but they've got a damned long way to go...

To upgrade from Business to Ultimate you have to pay the FULL upgrade price - the same as if you were upgrading from XP. A bit of a slap in the face.

Even MORE of a slap now that M$ has lowered their prices all across the line.

Thanks for letting it all hang out. :-)

I like a good rant now and again. I've been toying with the idea of building an Ubuntu box for a while. It makes me nervous. I'm not sure why. It could be that I worry I'm going to fry my computer. (I know, it's pretty silly to think that way.)
I haven't upgraded to Vista for the reason that I'd have to build an entirely new computer to run it effectively. My current PC was top-of-the-line some 4 years ago.
I'll stick with XP till things are sorted out.

Thanks for the tip on Fireworks. I think I'll get the full version.

I ran across this article the other day. People not using FW don't know what they're missing. :)

Awesome article! Thanks!

I recently moved from Photoshop to Fireworks to put together design comps because it truly is the design application for Web designers (in my opinion). Photoshop is designed for and caters to photographers. The application is huge, and working on comps, you'll hardly use the features. Fireworks has (nearly) every feature you'd use in Photoshop for Web design, but the added benefit of vector objects, and other tools designed specifically for you to get the look you're going for quickly and easily. It seems as though Fireworks has caught on quite a bit recently, and I'm reading more and more about people becoming interested in it. I think it's great, and suggest you (or any Web designer for that matter) give it a solid effort for at least a couple months. Learn the ins and outs of the app, and don't compare it to something you may be used to.

Fireworks is a great all-in-one tool. You can also use all of the Photoshop plugins in it (or at least the vast majority of them). It's way easier to learn and use than Photoshop.

Only downside is that your Photoshop skills fall by the wayside which can be a problem for employers.

Yeah I don't remember the last time I was asked how my Fireworks skills were. Photoshop yes...

@RightOn - Hey, how are your Fireworks skills? :-D Now you've got to reset the bar.

I think the common consensus is that Fireworks is more popular than Photoshop among the multi-discipline (both coder and designer) people. I'm a big fan of Illustrator and vector art but Photoshop has always seemed a bit overkill for what I'm usually working on, think I'll have to try out Fireworks as well. Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone.

LOL @ Chavez... I have to revise that and add "in a professional job setting" :)

I'm a Graphic Designer by trade and I just feel like Fireworks is too "web geek" for me... I feel like Photoshop and Illustrator are more powerful for what I need.