Duh...fireworks and making a dashed line?
christian
fireworks to make a dashed line, made with either the pen tool or
rectangle maker, or any tools for that matter.
thanks for any suggestions.
thanks,
solid-line-biased
fireworks 1.0
ppc/8.5.1
Ryan Miller
Check out:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/fireworks/ts/documents/fw_dashed_line.htm
That should get you rolling,
Ryan Miller
Macromedia Tech Support
Mark Seabloom
I just checked out the URL you mentioned. Kind of kludgy, don't you think. It
shouldn't be that hard to create a dotted line. I vote for including dotted
lines in the next rev.
Best regards,
Mark Seabloom
Senior Web Designer
Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL
Mark.P....@wheaton.edu
Sandee Cohen
I agree it's not very obvious where the dotted line settings are. I agree it's
not a one- or two-step process. But it's not a kludge. A kludge is a work around
for something the program doesn't actually do. The dotted line stroke controls
do exactly that which they were designed to do.
You create dotted or dasked lines in Fireworks by defining a new stroke. And
there are several controls that refine the dashed or dotted line. But if they
seem complicated it's only that the program is giving you some very powerful and
sophisticate controls.
I would, though, like to know what program you are comparing Fireworks to when
it comes to dashed or dotted lines. Illustrator? FreeHand? Those are vector
programs, and setting a dashed or dotted line in them is much simpler because
they do so much less than Fireworks.
However, if you compare the dashed and dotted lines in Fireworks to Photoshop,
you'll see just how incredibly powerful they are.
The only thing I would want for the dashed and dotted lines for Fireworks,
version 3, is to be able to separate the three tabbed controls for the strokes
so I can jump from one to another more easily.
Best,
Sandee Cohen
author Fireworks 2 Visual Quickstart Guide
Mark Seabloom
I admit to being a newbie to Fireworks, but I've have "seen the light" as to it's
incredible power and intelligent design for creating web graphics. It's integration
with Dreamweaver is fantastic. I am committing myself to using Fireworks as my
primary graphics app.
I am comparing it's apparent inability to do dotted lines to Freehand's. I'm sure
in a lot of ways, I'm just struggling with the learning curve of a new way of
thinking about graphics creation that Fireworks promotes.
-Mark Seabloom
-Mark.P....@wheaton.edu
Kal
You describe Fireworks' controls for creating a dashed line as powerful and
sophisticated. Have you tried to create a curved dashed (not dotted) line?
The closest I have come to producing this was by editing the Angle Stroke
Property under Sensitivity and setting Horizontal to 100 and Vertical to
100. While this works okay for straight lines at certain angles, try it on a
curved line and the results are less than acceptable.
Don't get me wrong - I think Fireworks is a fantastic program. I wouldn't
dream of using anything else to create graphics for the Web, but can someone
tell me what I should do when my client wants a multitude of web graphics
which require a multitude of curved dashed lines?
Regards
Kal Starkis
Web designer
----------
In article <372B3001...@mindspring.com>, Sandee Cohen
<san...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Mark,
>
>I agree it's not very obvious where the dotted line settings are. I agree
it's
>not a one- or two-step process. But it's not a kludge. A kludge is a work
around
>for something the program doesn't actually do. The dotted line stroke
controls
>do exactly that which they were designed to do.
>
>You create dotted or dasked lines in Fireworks by defining a new stroke.
And
>there are several controls that refine the dashed or dotted line. But if
they
>seem complicated it's only that the program is giving you some very
powerful and
>sophisticate controls.
>
>I would, though, like to know what program you are comparing Fireworks to
when
>it comes to dashed or dotted lines. Illustrator? FreeHand? Those are vector
>programs, and setting a dashed or dotted line in them is much simpler
because
>they do so much less than Fireworks.
>
>However, if you compare the dashed and dotted lines in Fireworks to
Photoshop,
>you'll see just how incredibly powerful they are.
>
>The only thing I would want for the dashed and dotted lines for Fireworks,
>version 3, is to be able to separate the three tabbed controls for the
strokes
>so I can jump from one to another more easily.
>
>Best,
>
>Sandee Cohen
>author Fireworks 2 Visual Quickstart Guide
>
Sandee Cohen
You're absolutely right. Curved dashes are not easily created and don't map
correctly to the lines. However, the curved dashes that you can find in
FreeHand or Illustrator are actually PostScript code commands. (The fact that
you can't expand the stroke in either of those programs to create the curve
shows that it's actually just a screen display of the code.)
However, if you create a curved dash in FreeHand or Illustrator and export it
out as a GIF, you can then open it in FW to use. Not as elegant as FW's own
brushes, but definitely a work around.
OK, let's see if I can sum this all up:
FW's dashes controls are hidden. (The fact that they need a tech note to
explain where they are proves it.)
FW's dashes controls are much more sophisticated than Photoshop.
FW's dashes controls are more sophisticated than vector dashes EXCEPT when it
comes to curved dashes.
You need to import curved dashes from FreeHand or Illustrator to make curved
dashes.
Best,
Sandee