Foundation Fireworks CS4

1.2. Fireworks as a design and illustration tool

Fireworks was primarily designed with screen output in mind. Pages are sized in pixel dimensions with resolutions that are generally similar to target monitor resolutions (1280×1024, 1024×768, and so on). When zoomed in on the design surface, you see pixel-based anti-aliasing, much like you would see in Photoshop. This often comes as a surprise to new users, considering most of the tools used to draw on the design surface are vector based. Coming to Fireworks from Illustrator, you expect to see sharp vector rendering regardless of how much you zoom in on the canvas.

With these screen-focused eccentricities, you may not expect Fireworks to be an excellent tool for design and illustration, but core ...