Rating: 
Summary: You'll Want This One... And Use It, Too!
Review: Well written, well presented, instructive, inspiring, and particularly ideal for someone with a background in computer graphics who now wants to be able to apply that knowledge and experience to Fireworks in order to be able to take advantage of its web-specific strengths. Rather than assuming that the reader has never before drawn a circle or edited a gradient-- something that happens all too often in books of this genre-- Ms. Evans effectively and efficiently covers the information that will allow someone skilled in Photoshop (or other graphics programs) to easily adapt his or her knowledge and experience to the Fireworks environment. From there she goes on to address animation techniques, making the most out of slices, the problematic pop-up menus, working with Fireworks 4 HTML code, and other web-specific tasks for which one has purchased Fireworks 4 in the first place. The material includes some moderately advanced graphics techniques and contains some wonderful tutorials, including Japi Honoo's famed "gel button" from the Escogitando web site. The tutorial images are nicely chosen, and although this is another instance in which there is very little use of color (only a brief insert) the images are all available on one of the accompanying CDs. Of perhaps even greater value are the accompanying tutorial movies, in which are demonstrated various techniques employed in the book's projects. These go a long way toward the avoidance of possible errors and confusion, and help speed along the user's development of his or her Fireworks skills. Mac users will be pleased to note that although there is a very slight bias toward the Windows contingent, the "Fireworks 4 f/x and Design" CDs are fully compatible with the Macintosh. All of the tutorial images, movies, and commands are available to both platforms, and the included demo plugins (there are quite a few of them) are supplied in both Win and Mac formats. Throughout the book, when keyboard commands are given they are supplied for both Win and Mac users (e.g., "...With the symbol selected, make a clone (Edit/Clone or Ctrl+Shift+D/Cmd+Shift+D)" The author has evidently taken care to try and make everyone happy and, to a surprising extent, has succeeded. In a crowded field of books in which the choices are often perplexing and generally expensive, Ms. Evans offers a volume of substantial content that delivers on its promises and has much to offer the Fireworks user who is already at home with computer graphics. It's money well spent-- on a book well worth having.
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