Fireworks

The new features Fireworks CS5 does have may not be earth shattering but, they are welcome additions that will help many users in their everyday work. Some of the most noteworthy for me include:

Snap to pixel
Compound Shapes
Stroke Alignment
Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) file support
Many small improvements to Pages, Layers, Slices and more…
Refer to Bruce’s article above for a complete list. Like I said, nothing earth shattering here but these are welcome additions that bring a little of long overdue sophistication to Fireworks.

But what do I really think…

People who know me and long time readers of this blog know that I have been very critical of Fireworks’ development direction in the past. I still think major mistakes have been made and great opportunities have been lost. But that was the past. What I think Fireworks CS5 brings at this time is a great foundation for the future. Now that so many bugs have been fixed and Fireworks is more stable than ever, let’s hope that further development efforts will finally bring some long overdue improvements to Fireworks’ creative tool set.

What has always been Fireworks’ strength and still makes it unique in the world of graphic design applications is its incredible integrated hybrid tool set. Its mix of bitmap and vector tools mixed in with amazing workflow features make it an unparalleled Web centric graphic design workhorse that is still unmatched in flexibility and efficiency. But there’s still so much more room for improvement in its creative tool set.