Adobe Zii Alternative
Sandra Grady
B) students love Figma. A few of our teachers tried to hold on to XD and Sketch, but students preferred Figma. Students were asking why anyone would be teaching XD when everyone else is using Figma. Obviously no rational answer could be given. All instructors dropped Sketch and/or XD.
You would do your students a disservice by continuing to teach XD in my opinion. Besides, XD is currently no longer developed and in maintainance mode: based on Adobe's past behaviour we all know where this is headed.
Simple answer is "No". XD is a dead tool. It has had its chance, and then Figma happened. Adobe as an inflexible and archaic behemoth of a company proved unable to keep up and predictably attempted a buy-out instead. That failed as well (luckily enough because Adobe would have run it aground for the same reasons XD failed to remain competitive).
Excellent answer from a few months later. I needed a prototyping tool on my new machine and once again searched for XD in apps only to realize it's not available in the Creative Cloud app. Simply put, Adobe doesn't really care about its customers - if they can't develop an app, they drop the idea and try to devour the competition. The quicker I learn how to use Figma, the happier I will be.
I have used XD since Beta and it's been my go to design tool ever since. I've realised i'll need to switch but my concern about switching to Figma is that they were trying to sell the company, Adobe wanted it until they looked into their numbers. So it doesn't feel like a safe alternative, it's feels like jumping from a sinking ship onto a dingy with a hole in it.
I'm going to miss how it easy it was to bring in elements from my other Adobe apps into XD but guess i need to learn figma now and pay for an extra subscription, looks like my adobe one will be getting downgraded. It doesn't make sense what adobe are doing buying up web businesses like Magento yet getting rid of their web design software, crazy!
I am just finishing learning Figma, so here it is: first of all, regulators stepped in and the asquisition may not happen. Even if it does, FIgma is a superior tool to XD, even without the seemless integration with other apps and the easy preview. It's inevitable you will need it.
Adobe is such a huge and filled with greed corporation at this point, that if you can ditch Illustrator altogether for your simple vector stuff, you will thank yourself. Especially if you do not make very complicated stuff with Illustrator.
Figma does operate differently with vectors, boolean operations can be non-destructive. You will need to learn how it works, but once you learn it, you'll be thankful to yourself you did. This program is basically what Illustrator was back in the days, in terms of innovation (even though I don't want to compare them directly, they are different tools for different purposes).
There's no alternative for now. The plan was to acquire Figma in place of developing Xd, which failed. It's unlikely they will reinvest into Xd, as it's so far behind at this point, and was plagued by bugs and bad decisions from the start.
It would be nice to still have the choice beetween figma and other tools, Xd is much more 'fluid ' than figma whi is really We don't have choice : Figma at the end or alternative could be some open source prototype apps it depends of your budget and goal.
The main reason why I still teach XD as well as Figma is many of the companies are still asking for XD in the job positions are:
Recently, this was yesterday between a former student and I
The main reason why I still teach Xd is because if companies are still asking for this, and nobody can do the job, people like me who still dabbles in it can get freelance work...but, this is also an opportunity for students to get their foot in the door. The more applications and skills they know, the better opportunity they can get in sooner than later....
I once interviewed for a graphic designer at a company that we were hiring. I knew the applicant, and I knew he was a wizard with QuarkXPress, but not so much about InDesign. So, I asked him, of his skill level. He said he was 'Advanced Level!" I said great, because we have a test for you in InDesign. The truth came out, and he said, sorry, I really don't know InDesign, and declined the test. Goes to show you, two complete different applications aren't always the same.
Many of my students prefer Xd while many prefer Figma. But, if schools can teach them both, at least they have a chance to work in Xd, and maybe even teach the company Figma and show how intuitive it is.
A difficult question to answer - I guess it depends on your preferred workflow and how you used Fireworks. Fireworks, no matter how you looked at it, did get quite old in the teeth - workflows have changed quite a bit nowadays, and FW was not keeping up. Adobe is, I think, hoping to have Photoshop replace it. But that is not quite the best option right now.
I found a good replacement in Photoline, although it is still missing a couple of things crucial to web dev. The good things are full svg support (import and export), export of (selected) layers, pages, good (real) vector tools, pixel alignment for vector layers, virtual copies of layers, excellent bitmap tools (comparable to PS), good guides, good alignment tools, patterns, a built-in procedural texture maker, document colours (newest beta), pixel view, anti-aliasing control per layer, great down-scaling algorithms, and so on. I use Qolor Quantizer and RIOT for web graphics optimization.
The things missing are: slicing (which I never used anymore anyway - all layer based workflow now); symbols (though virtual layers work as a workaround); a general pixel alignment setting; no html/css output (which I never need anyway).
It can do much more than Fireworks, but for pure web work it is still missing some things. The devs are very open to suggestions, though, and so far have been adding a lot of useful web functionality. It can only improve, in my opinion.
Of course, you could switch to Photoshop - but that is still too awkward for web work, in my opinion. Illustrator could also be an option. Even InDesign can be used for working web prototypes. But none of these are truly optimized for web work.
Axure RP is a great option for making wireframes and working prototypes. Not so great for visual design or exporting to image files. I hear of people using Sketch 3, although I haven't since it can't export to PSD.
didnt find evolveUI on tribaloid but did find it on the chrome store. have not tried it yet. dont really think it will live up to my expectations with regard to fireworks but Ill check it out. thanks for the other links. I think photoline might work if it does pages.
Affinity does have an issue with exporting assets, though: no preview. It's its Achilles' heel, because unlike Fireworks it is not possible to check the export quality in advance. I hope this will be fixed in 2.0.
Designer also does not support pages. I would get all three Affinity apps, which includes Publisher and does work with pages and page templates (and is much more powerful than Fireworks in this regard). Interestingly enough the same file can be edited by all three apps, and when working in Publisher a seamless Designer and Photo workflow is available: click an image, switch to the Photo work space, edit, switch back to Publisher. Same for Designer. Quite a unique experience.
I agree. I am SUPER bummed out that it is no longer available with creative cloud. As much as this product costs I pretty annoyed that one of my favorite adobe products is no longer available. I hope the version I currently have don't stop working.
after reading some of these responses I think I know why adobe did this. for most of us fireworks did it all for web graphics. so if fireworks were in the cloud you would only have to spend 9 bucks a month to use it.
remove it and then if you can stand to use illustrator and photoshop and whatever else you think might do some of what you did in fireworks you would then have to subscribe to a higher monthly fee to do in multiple programs what you now do in one. this is simple capitalist greed.
I never thought I would seriously ever consider ANY other software than adobe. looks like now Ill go try out some of these other products. which BTW I would never have heard of if I were not looking to replace the abandoned fireworks.
The problem with continuing to use Fireworks is that the operating systems are going to leave it behind. Like Final Cut Pro 7, hanging on for a while worked, but it was a stop-gap measure. The day came when moving on was imperative because OSX kept moving forward. For Mac users, Fireworks is starting to fail on the latest OS, so the time to move is nigh. Sigh.
I dont really want to leave my fireworks behind but adobe has given me no choice. I have to find supported software that fits my workflow before I can no longer even open the plethora of work which I rely on.
I used Freehand until it was more than dead. lost much by not getting things converted before it was too late.
For Windows users I don't see any need to switch to something inferior, less intuitive or user friendly to Fireworks that makes life more difficult and slows down the workflow, Fireworks runs on Windows 10 too. It might be different for Mac users and there are a couple of reasonable alternative options for Mac that aren't available to Windows users ... unless something drastically changes I see no need to abandoned Fireworks to use two or three clunky programs to replace it ......
no one in my family ever has to ask me to figure out what happened on their mac...but on a PC I am always getting...what happened...is it broken..can you fix it? with a PC I say, restart. reboot. pray. lol
93ddb68554