Just started using it a little yesterday and today. My initial thoughts:
- It seems like most of the effort was spent on updating the UI to be
more consistent across the Adobe products. The jury's out for me on
whether this is better or worse. Probably some of both, but mostly
it's just different. Since I don't use the other Adobe products very
much, I don't see much benefit here, but I understand why they are
doing it.
- Second most noticable thing was that there seems to be a lot of new
functionality that will make doing visual design more robust (more/
better tools for working with colors, type along paths, combining/
editing paths, spacing objects, working with masks, etc.). I'm sure
much of this is borrowed from Illustrator & Photoshop. Cool if that is
important to you (which it sometimes is for me).
- It looks like they've spent some time improving how Symbols and the
Common Library work, but frankly what was introduced in CS3 seemed
like they rushed to include it (beta functionality, not well thought
out). It doesn't look like the functionality in CS4 is dramatically
different, but hopefully it just works (better).
- There's more emphasis on using styles (styles are added to the
Properties panel, you can easily redefine a style based on the
selection, etc.). This seems like it will be handy and good once I
start to really use it. But, why did they add a bunch of goofy new
built-in styles?
Some cool small things that already seem really handy:
- Smart guides are great -- they let you align things on the fly
easily without having to use the align tool. The potential for this to
just be annoying in complex documents seems high, but it's easy enough
to toggle on/off.
- Line with arrowhead(s) is a built-in vector object. Yay!
- There's a "measure tool" (another built-in vector object) which will
be great for annotating (as you increase the width/height, it updates
a text field with the dimension in pixels!)
- There are functions to match the width and/or height of objects
(e.g., select 2 rectangles, then click a button make them the same
width). I guess they are slowly incorporating great tools that John
Dunning built as Fireworks extensions years ago (thanks John, I still
use that stuff all the time).
They seem to be touting this version as being great for prototyping...
I haven't really explored that yet.
-Adam
On May 27, 2008, at 2:53 PM, Will Evans wrote:
I have noticed over twitter two very different takes on Fireworks CS4.
Who has downloaded the beta? Who is trying it out - and what are your
thoughts so far, as it relates to prototyping, etc....just want to
take the
twitterstreams and bring it into public discussion.
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