Macromedia® FreeHand®MX: Training from the Source

Lesson 8. Symbols, Brushes, and Hoses

After the successful introduction of symbols in Macromedia Flash, Macromedia wisely added symbols to its FreeHand and Fireworks programs. Although symbols work slightly differently in each application, the underlying concept is basically the same: symbols streamline the use of repeating elements on your pages. Multiple instances of a symbol on a page consume much less memory than the same number of separate images, reducing file size. More important, when you make a change to a symbol, every instance of the symbol on the page is updated automatically.

Whenever you create a symbol, it is added to the Library panel. As you will see in this lesson, you can group your library items to make them more manageable. ...