Adobe Fireworks

This is a program i hadnt previously used, but since taking to Web Design in my own time it is a piece of software that has really opened things up.
From personal experience, i have found that designing a website is inredibly time consuming. First you have to know what is going to go into the website and what you want to acheieve and then you go about setting up its structure and design.
I tend to design on paper and know exactly how i want it to look first, before making a mock up on the computer, but then you have to go about breaking it up into css and html. If a similar template can be found this will save time but generally its a very time consuming process.

Fireworks helps irradicate this and allows you to quite quickly generate a rough idea for a website. This is good as it speeds up the time between concept and product. It allows you to create on the spot with a client, or at least allow you to produce a prototype very quickly. You can also make fully functioning websites with it and then break it down to XHTML/CSS. Which is fantastic.

This isnt all fireworks is for, however, it is a very diverse tool, that unlike photoshop, is made to work with the web.



At the moment i am just experimenting with it but i intend to redesign my website using fireworks. I think it should allow me to concentrate more on the way it works and looks due to it concentrating more on the form of the website, rather than the function.