Re: Online help formats -- web graphics info

["William D. Garriott" <wdg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

(snip)
>The main problems we have with our own HTML conversion (not using WWP),
>are that complex graphics convert badly...

I realize that this deals with only part of your issue, but in the interest
of freely sharing information here in the hopes that someone may benefit.
I'm still beholding to this group for some great information last year when
I was scouting FM!

Macromedia (which is to the web, what Adobe is to print), has a couple tools
which are the best in the business for web graphics. The first is Flash 3 (I
guarantee that most of you already have the Flash Shockwave plugin, and it's
so commonly used that it's built into both newest browsers). It is vector
based, zoomable (something like 3 to 5 zooms into a graphic!), allows
animations (fast vector based), and I believe you can imbed fonts. You can
take illustrations from FreeHand 8 (which opens 'bout everything including
AI 7 -- not 8 yet), including layers. You can get both Flash3 and FreeHand 8
in the Design in Motion Suite, which will save you some by buying the
bundle. FH 8 has some interesting effects such as lenses which create true
magnification of a drawing area (map, drawing detail...). I used to be a big
Illustrator fan but got won over by FreeHand, which is a serious package for
print graphics by the way. To view a set of graphics which were created in
FreeHand and put into Flash for the web, go to
http://www.concentric.net/~agzak/centers.html  Mac users zoom by control-key
clicking, Win users right button click.

The second tool is called Fireworks 2. It is a totally new type of graphics
program specifically for creating and optimizing web graphics: jpegs, gifs,
gif animations and pngs (rgb tiff also, should you need it). It has up to 4
export previews so you can see what different export parameters will do to
the image, while giving you pertinent information like file size and load
time on a given connection. Images can be created in layers using both paint
and vector based tools. Original graphics can stay "live" and fully editable
in the original file, while exports are in the bitmap formats mentioned. By
"live" I mean that text and vector graphics (and not just "nav" buttons, but
complex graphics) can have editable fills and strokes which look exactly
like filtered photoshop images (with alpha blending and composite modes),
bevels, glows, drop shadows, etc. With virtually all of these applied, you
can go back and edit the text! Or grab an object's outline and alter it. You
don't go back to the original Illustrator file and edit it, re-export to
Photoshop, apply the filters, flatten it and export as the web graphic. Sure
it does the nav graphics faster than anything. You could probably build a
button object (any shape) with complex texture, text, drop shadow (all
editable at any time) and all four button states and export with built in
url and javascript in a minute. What amazed me when I started using it were
the complex paintings which were actually editable vector objects. Tools for
slicing images, applying java rollovers and behaviors, image maps and url
links are inherent in the program. FW2 works hand-in-glove with Dreamweaver2
(the top dog in web design -- but maybe not so helpful here as it isn't
designed to work specifically with Frame). The only downside I've seen with
FW2 is that it doesn't scale down dialog box screen shots to *arbitrary*
sizes quite as well as Fireworks 1 or Photoshop does -- it's scaling
interpolation favors full color over indexed color, so the dialog text looks
a little soft when scaled down.

You can download a fully functional 30-day trial version of any or all of
these at: http://www.macromedia.com/
Browse through the Products list to find the one you are interested in.

By the way, each of Macromedia's products has its own online support area
with searchable technotes and newsgroup. Post a question and see if you
don't get a quick answer or three... like you do here!

Thanks for all the help you guys have given me this past year!

Bill


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