Macromedia Inc has upgraded its Fireworks web graphic production tool and launched a new site pushing the benefits of its Flash vector graphics technology. The San Francisco-based firm says that Fireworks 2 includes a slew of customer requested upgrades to the original product. Including the ability to request global updates of colors, text and URLs across a project web site.
In time for the Seybold digital publishing conference last week, the firm also launched a web site dedicated to developers who want to learn more about how to use the company’s Flash vector graphics. Vector graphics offer a number of important advantages to web designers. Unlike traditional web graphic formats, such as JPEG and GIF, vector-drawn images are not fully rendered images drawn pixel by pixel. Rather, they are sets of algorithms, which instruct the client system how to redraw the image. A vector image can be transmitted in a much smaller file than its bitmapped equivalent. Rival Adobe Inc is pushing its own vector graphics format, precision graphics markup language (PGML).
