Fireworks Interview with Aaron Abeall
Thanks to Aaron Abeall for his time for this wonderful interview and his continuous contribution to Fireworks and the community over the years!
To begin with, who are you and where are you from Mr. Aaron?
I'm a web designer and developer, freelancing in the Washington DC area.
What do you do for work as your day job?
I design a lot of websites, apps, and other design work, as well as build frontend experiences that focus on interaction and animation using Flash, Flex, and jQuery. The particulars of what I do can vary a lot from project to project, and Fireworks' flexibility is critical.
Firstly, I love your extensions. Tell us a bit about how you got started making extensions for Fireworks.
I always loved Fireworks because it is so precise, flexible and fast, and by creating extensions I can make workflows even faster and more precise, letting me focus on creativity. It's like the perfect combination of using my left and right brain: I get to develop useful functionality, and I get to actually use it to create cool stuff.
What motivates you to make extensions and how do you get the ideas?
Most of my extensions were made because I was trying to achieve an effect, and I thought "hey, I could do this faster/better if there was a tool for it." So I make one! I also get lots of great ideas from the Fireworks community, and I am very keen to help promote Fireworks by extending it.
What is your proudest extension you have developed so far?
I think I would have to be proudest of the Path panel. I love Fireworks' vector editing capabilities, and the Path panel was a project to bring many of those vector related features into focus, and push the features even further. I use it constantly. I also can't help be a little proud that the Path panel now ships in Adobe Fireworks, my favorite design app. :)
Fireworks works even better with fireworks extensions. What are your favorite extensions from other developers and how do you use it in your work?
There's a lot of great extensions for Fireworks, but one of my favorites has to be John Dunning's "Keyboard Resize" commands. They're so simple yet very useful for resizing vector layouts, which you do a lot in Fireworks. Another all-time favorite is the Transform panel from senocular.com.
You are currently working on a new revamped website for the Fireworks community. Tell us more about it and the process in making the website.
Yes, I am very excited! I've totally redesigned and rebuilt my Fireworks resource site, fireworks.abeall.com, using Fireworks and Dreamweaver -- I have many new Fireworks goodies lined up for release. I started with a lot of planning, then made a few homepage design variations in Fireworks based on a main theme I had in my mind. After I selected a homepage, I designed out many of the key interior page layouts on various pages within Fireworks; by using layer sharing across pages this is a rapid process. Then I went about exporting layout images using slices, and using some of my own extensions along the way to do things like CSS image sprites and CSS styles, and finalized the code in Dreamweaver. I am working on an in-depth article that covers the whole process from start to finish.
What type of projects do you work in Fireworks and are there any challenges you faced that Fireworks have helped you ?
In Fireworks I design a lot of web and app layouts. One of the biggest challenges Fireworks helps with is designing out how interaction will work. Since I can design in vector and use 9-slice resizing, I can quickly and accurately design exactly how something might move, resize, or adjust layout when interacted with. It also helps when a client decides on a change; when I'm using pages and page sharing, I can change something on one page and its changed on all pages, and I can export a preview of the entire site for the client in no time. Another big advantage is when building things in Flash: Fireworks' hybrid vector and bitmap designs translate really well into Flash, where other tools have problems with things getting flattened lost along the way. Also, the guide tooltips let me build in HTML faster, because I can easily measure distances from the guides I used to design the site graphics itself. The list could go on. :)
How long have you been using Fireworks?
I have been using it since Fireworks MX.
If you can only list 5 best features in Fireworks, what will they be?
1. Vector tools
2. Pages and states
3. Symbols
4. Live filters
5. Gradient tool with live dithering (smooth gradients without banding)
Many people compare Photoshop with Fireworks. What is your viewpoint in this?
Both are great tools and I think there's a lot of overlap in how people try to use them, but their strengths are a bit different. Photoshop is great at pixel editing, brushing, editing photos, and creating artwork; while Fireworks strengths are hybrid vector/bitmap editing, layout design, interaction mockup, wireframing, web export workflows, and it handles design changes very flexibly. Both are great at what they do, and I use both, but I will always go to Fireworks for a web/screen design because of its strength, and I will always go to Photoshop when I have photo/imagery I need to work on.
Do you have a Fireworks tip for the Fireworks community?
Use symbols. Everyone knows about pages and states (I hope!) but often symbols are over-looked. They let you re-use common elements across your design and keep them in sync, they let you resize bitmap images without losing quality, they let you resize vectors and bitmaps using 9-slice scaling to preserve corners and edges, they let you link assets in multiple documents, and they can even be have custom editable widget-like properties added. Symbols can really save the day when you remember to use them.
Are you involved with any communities on the web?
Yes, I tend to hang around fireworksguruforum.com, forums.adobe.com/community/fireworks, ActionScript.org, and I always like hearing from fellow Fireworkers over good old fashioned email.
Do you have a blog? Where can we find you?
I post lots of Fireworks related stuff at fireworks.abeall.com, and you can find me on Twitter @AaronBeall
Thanks for the opportunity to talk to one of the best Fireworks Developers. Last question, do you have any advice to the designers out there exploring Fireworks?
If you are a Photoshop user and you design or develop for the web and the screen, I recommend using Fireworks for a few days to get accustomed to the UI differences, and I would be surprised if you don't see how it can help your workflow! Photoshop and Fireworks can work together quite well.
