Fireworks MX 2004 Upgrade

Rating:
Summary: Much slower than previous version (MX 6.0)
Review: Despite what Macromedia writes in their self-inflating promotional literature, Fireworks MX 2004 is SLOWER than Fireworks MX. The application has gotten bigger, slower, dumber. Like Dreamweaver MX 2004, it is also rife with bugs that Macromedia refuses to acknowledge, much less issue fixes for.

Try this simple test: create a new document in Fireworks MX (the original version, not 2004). Create some text. create a shape. Add a layer folder. Create text and a shape in that new layer folder. Then try open and close the layer (using triangle). Nice and quick, right? Now take the same document and open it in Fireworks MX 2004. It's slow as a molasses. Trying to open and close the layer triangle takes *seconds* to execute, instead of instantaneous.

Save your money, stick with Fireworks MX. The upgrade to 2004 will only set you back some hard-earned cash, and it will kill your productivity.

Rating:
Summary: What's Wrong With It?
Review: I am surprised why Fireworks MX 2004 is so slow! I thought that maybe because I was using the trial version, the program crawled through even the basic functions. To be fair, I only spent a few minutes with it so there might be some workarounds I have missed. But those first few minutes disappointed me.

I opened a digital image, (jpeg, about 900kB taken by a digital camera) on Fireworks so I can make exposure corrections. Applied filter, Levels... took Fireworks 3 seconds to open the Levels dialog box.

Clicked Preview. Another 2 or 3 seconds before the change was reflected on the workspace.

Moved the sliders, again 2-3 seconds before the effect updated on the workspace.

The unsharp mask dialog box appeared 3 seconds after the option was clicked and took all of 5 seconds to update the changes.

The slowness of Fireworks MX 2004 is all the more obvious when I compared it with Photoshop 7. There is no waiting time when applying filters in PS 7 for my digital photographs. (Your workflow may vary, of course.) Photoshop is just swift. I looked for scratch disk on Fireworks but found none. Could there be speed-workarounds I have missed? I wonder. If it was really fast it would have blazed as soon as I ran it. I used other Effects like color balance and seen the same behavior: you will see the hourglass everytime you make any change. What a pity as the interface looked really cool. Perhaps the real strength of Fireworks appear in doing Web projects as touted by Macromedia. But Web images are still subject to image editing, aren't they?

I would recommend this if the flipping hourglass icon is your idea of productivity and fun. Trial is available from Macromedia and you can do worse than taking it for a free spin. See for yourself.

If macromedia can make Fireworks MX 2004 as speedy and as reliable as Flash MX (not the 2004 version) I would consider it again. But as it is, no, thank you.

Rating:
Summary: CAREFUL of Fireworks
Review: I honestly cannot imagine why anyone, given a choice, would use Fireworks. The program is absolutely crawling with bugs. It's slow. It lacks essential tools. Even the much-touted ability to handle both vector and bitmap graphics is likely to get in your way as much as help you.

To give an idea of the extent of bugs -- simple things the program can't handle -- if you copy a portion of a graphic and create a new file to drop it into, the new file will almost always be created slightly too big. Leaving you a one-or-two-pixel gap along a side.

My advice is clear: stick to Photoshop. Fireworks is something to use only if you don't have the money for the real thing.