Fireworks CS5 Barely Gets A Mention At Adobe’s CS5 Launch
Remember when Fireworks CS4 came out and you felt slightly punched in the face by Adobe because all of their other major applications got awesome features and all Fireworks got was bugs? I do.
Adobe announced Creative Suite 5 yesterday and it seems as though Fireworks was once again overshadowed by Photoshop’s new features and all of the other new features in their other applications. Not everyone likes using Photoshop for web design, what about us Fireworks users?
They’ve finally fixed the bugs in Fireworks and incompatibilities with exporting files and importing Photoshop files, illustrator files and other Adobe formats. It’s about damn time. Fireworks was not mentioned at all in the release broadcast, and if you look in the products drop-down on the Adobe site, you can’t even see Fireworks in the list. The only mention of Fireworks CS5 is on Bruce Bowman’s blog post about it here.
Makes me wonder if Fireworks CS5 is merely all of the bug fixes from CS3 and CS4 with a couple of new features thrown in.
I’ve seen Fireworks CS5 in action. This is a great version, compared to CS4 (and CS3)!
Fw CS5 is faster, better, more powerful, with new tools added (Compound Paths rock!), much better text editing options, and it feels as a real app now!
Bruce’s article:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/bbowman_fwcs5.html
…described in details some of the new cool stuff!
Btw, you’re right about Adobe — it feels like they are ashamed that Fireworks even exists (and they have to develop it), so they try to keep it away from the spotlights… You have to dig inside Adobe.com website really deep to see where is Fireworks…
Fireworks is my tool of choice and I feel sad that Ps/Ai get so much coverage, when in fact, Fireworks is much better for any Web/screen workflows…
Michel,
Having now tried Fireworks CS5 for myself, I am pretty damn happy. It feels so fast and nice to use compared to CS3 and CS4. I haven’t encountered any bugs, and because it is my editor of choice for web graphics, I have even found it has better compatibility when importing PSD files.
I still don’t understand why to this day it is basically invisible on the Adobe website to find Fireworks CS5. It’s not in the products drop-down and even expanding the products list out doesn’t reveal it straight away.
Are any of you running Fireworks CS5 on Snow Leopard? I am reluctant to go with ANOTHER bad update to Fireworks. Such a great product that was thoroughly trashed in CS4.
Any suggestion on how we can get Adobe to focus on Fireworks and return it to it’s former greatness?
The last version I worked on was Fireworks 8. CS 5 is very similar but worth the upgrade. It is to me probably still the best application for desiging web graphics. Adobe for some reason gives it a very low profile but from what I have read it is growing in popularity because it is so efficient and quick to create create graphics. I even use it for my documentaton and presentations if I can’t find what I want in MS Office.