Dreamweaver and Fireworks

Dreamweaver and Fireworks were initially separately conceived applications. With version 4 both applications were changed to interact seamlessly. There are instances that make working with both applications almost like working with a single, integrated application.

In order to take fullest advantage of the integration some basic principles need to be followed.

Keeping files together

Store your source files i.e., the .png files in a folder that is part of your Dreamweaver site. By doing that you will always have quick or even automated access to the source files.

One way to do this is to create a folder for these work-assets. I usually call the folder just 'work-assets' and store all Fireworks documents there. The folder can be treated like the automatically generated Dreamweaver folders (templates and library).

Let's save our work as new-subnav.png in the work-assets folder. Select File > Save and navigate to the work-assets folder.

The folder is empty and will now include our source file. We call the Fireworks PNG the source file because it is in the fully editable stage.

The graphics that are created upon export are flat images that look the same but have no ties to the objects from which they were created.

When the file is saved we should set the export parameters.