I used to love Macromedia Fireworks, so that I bought a copy of Fireworks after Adobe acquired Macromedia. I had to jump through some crazy hoops to prove that I did not steal the product, and that was nothing compared to what I had to do after buying a new computer – it turns out that I was supposed to unactivate the product on the old one and then activate on the new one. This is not what you do to your customers. I don’t even want to start on the issue of software quality or customer service (I once did the mistake of trying to report an i13n issue with my copy of Fireworks).
I swore there’s not going to be any software by Adobe on my computer anymore, and I even disabled Flash in my primary browser. I am lucky that I can do with the new wave of Mac graphics editors like Pixelmator. I was so happy paying for that product on the Mac App Store, getting a copy and doing nothing else that would require it to work. I was so happy that it starts immediately, that is has a decent UI. It’s not feature complete, it’s got its own bugs, but it’s a software and experience I am willing to pay for. Unlike Adobe. (Which is a company I once liked, being a typography geek and typesetting our school magazine in an old copy of PageMaker.)
Do you think Pixelmator is a good replacement for Fireworks? Fireworks has been really great at allowing me to quickly mock-up different web layout concepts without having to write any HTML code. I know some are in the "concept with HTML camp", but I've found Fireworks to be so much faster. I've never bothered too much with Photoshop since Fireworks did 90% of what I wanted.
I'm like many, however, in grumbling about how crappy Fireworks has gotten (at least on OSX, not sure about Windows) and am to the point that I'm ready to move on.
Pixelmator is a almost perfect clone of Photoshop 5. Not CS5, version 5 from 1998 or so. Even the shortcut keys are identical. I happen to like it a lot.
If your primary use of FW is to mock something up and export it as HTML and image slices, Pixelmator is not for you. You can get a free trial, IIRC, and see for yourself.
I have moved from webdesign so that I no longer need the design features I admired on Fireworks. What I liked most about Fireworks was the blend between the vector and bitmap graphics, and I don’t think that Pixelmator is getting anywhere close to that. But it’s worth to take a look. Also try out Acorn (http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/). I think both have a free evaluation.
I'm a huge fan of Pixelmator. Read Fabio Sasso's tutorials if you're having doubts, might not necessarily be much on web mockups, inspiring nonetheless. http://abduzeedo.com/tags/pixelmator?page=1
I used to love Macromedia Fireworks, so that I bought a copy of Fireworks after Adobe acquired Macromedia. I had to jump through some crazy hoops to prove that I did not steal the product, and that was nothing compared to what I had to do after buying a new computer – it turns out that I was supposed to unactivate the product on the old one and then activate on the new one. This is not what you do to your customers. I don’t even want to start on the issue of software quality or customer service (I once did the mistake of trying to report an i13n issue with my copy of Fireworks).
I swore there’s not going to be any software by Adobe on my computer anymore, and I even disabled Flash in my primary browser. I am lucky that I can do with the new wave of Mac graphics editors like Pixelmator. I was so happy paying for that product on the Mac App Store, getting a copy and doing nothing else that would require it to work. I was so happy that it starts immediately, that is has a decent UI. It’s not feature complete, it’s got its own bugs, but it’s a software and experience I am willing to pay for. Unlike Adobe. (Which is a company I once liked, being a typography geek and typesetting our school magazine in an old copy of PageMaker.)