Jim Babbage

Sailing, sailing over the bounding sea... Or in our case, inside a wine glass. We've all seen the ship-in-a-bottle knick-knack. Well, I'm here to show you how to set a sailboat afloat in a wine glass, using Fireworks MX or MX 2004, vector AND bitmap masks. Heave ho, matey, and don't forget to buckle your swash! Combining images is part of the fun with programs like Fireworks. Making those images look like they belong together - to fool the eye, as they say - is challenging and rewarding. Take this unlikely pair of images, for example: a studio beauty shot of a wine bottle with a glass and a sailboat. Wouldn't it be neat to make the sailboat seem as if it were floating inside the wine glass? If you answered "yes," continue on. If you answered "no," re-read the previous paragraph and answer, "yes," this time. Now that we're all in agreement, let's set sail - errr - g... (more)

Batch Processing in Fireworks 8

I've lately seen a few posts on the Adobe forums and here on CMX about batch processing in Fireworks. Considering the Fireworks 8 Batch Processing utility had some noteworthy revisions, I thought it would be a good idea to go over the wizard in detail. Streamlined and enhanced file renaming, the ability to check file dimensions when scaling during a batch process and the addition of a status bar and log file are the most notable improvements to Batch Processing. There are many articles here on CMX that touch on Batch Processing, but they are geared towards specific goals. In this... (more)

Still Snowing

In "Let It Snow, Man" (MXDJ Vol. 2, issue 12), I used Fireworks to create all the essential ingredients for our frozen friend. We then exported the pieces using Export as CSS Layers. This gave us a starting HTML page (generated by Fireworks) and all of our graphics in absolutely positioned DW layers (DIVs). In this article we will work in Dreamweaver and use the Drag Layer behavior to create a Web page where you can move all the snowman pieces together and build your own snowman online. The Drag Layer behavior uses Dynamic HTML (DHTML) to make your page interactive. This concept ... (more)

Let It Snow, Man!

Well, there's a chill in the air. The leaves have fallen, the wind is brisker, and sometimes, even in early November, there's that "scent of snow" in the air. In the lead-up to the holiday season, I have created a two-part series that uses both Fireworks and Dreamweaver. The end result will be a fun little "build your own" snowman Web page. In Fireworks we will create all the essential ingredients for our frozen friend. Then, in Dreamweaver, we'll use the Drag Layer behavior to create a Web page where we can move all the snowman pieces together and build our own snowman online. T... (more)

A Fireworks Quickie - Optimizing Text

Getting good quality text in a JPEG file has long been a concern for many designers. Fortunately for us, Fireworks MX and higher versions have a very useful feature to help with this called the Selective Quality. In Fireworks MX 2004 and higher, we also have the ability to adjust and customize the aliasing of text. In this short tutorial find out how to utilize these features to keep your text crisp and snappy when exporting a file as a JPEG image (see Figure 1). We'll begin by looking at the custom anti-aliasing attributes in the Properties inspector. Fireworks MX 2004 and late... (more)