Fireworks 8 Dream Trip (4): Other panels

Previous section: Fireworks 8 Dream Trip (3): Auto Shape Properties Panel

Three, the layers panel, the special characters panel, the styles Panel, the library panel

What's new in the Layers panel, new special characters panel, kind of added style panel, cooler library panel.

　　1, "Layer" Panel introduction

In Fireworks 8, for the level of the Board has a few more appropriate improvement measures, below we separately Yi Yilai see.

First, let's look at a layer board that has been multi-step, and then introduce the features.

First, the locking of the individual object layer (shown in Figure 1).

For a separate object layer, you can use the menu Modify | Lock selected (CTRL+ALT+L) command to achieve a separate lock on the object layer, or you can lock the object layer by clicking in the space in front of the edit object thumbnail to show the lock icon.

Before Fireworks 8, can not be locked to a separate object layer, the solution is either to create a separate layer, the need to lock the object to all the past, and then lock it, or directly hide the layer, but also to avoid the object was mistakenly deleted, but in this way, The overall editing of the image has an impact, so that is very inconvenient. And the "Lock selected" feature of Fireworks 8 is a very effective way to edit complex graphics and Multipath objects,

Second, with the SHIFT key, you can select multiple object layers at once.

If there are several objects in a layer, the choice is simple, either directly in the editing area in a circle way, or on the level board with the ALT key to select multiple objects, but once we have dozens of or even hundreds of objects in a layer, and the editing area and other layers of objects exist, Both of these methods are not scientific enough to select all the objects in the layer. Now, in Fireworks 8, with the SHIFT key, you can quickly select all objects from the first object layer to the last object layer at once, and automatically skip the object layer if there is a separate locked object layer, as shown in the previous illustration, The individual locked object layer is not selected.

Third, the text object entered in the edit area displays the first few characters of its content on the Level Panel (how much of the character is related to your thumbnail option setting). Personally think this function is very helpful to the graphics producers who need to do multiple text input, can quickly find the relevant text objects on the level board, than in the editing area to find a lot faster.

[Supplemental Note:] Inside the fireworks MX2004, for the bitmap object in the editing area, we can get the selection of the bitmap object by clicking the object layer on the Level Panel, but in fireworks 8, the function inexplicably disappears, puzzling, It is not convenient in practical application.

　　2, "Special characters" Panel introduction

Inside Fireworks 8, a special character panel is added that incorporates many common symbolic text. For these characters input, in the original version, there has been no particularly good method, now look very simple.

The special character panel is very simple to use, first select the Toolbox's Text tool (shortcut key is "T"), click the mouse in the edit area, and then click the character object you want to insert in the special characters panel to complete the input of the character, and then you can adjust the properties such as color, font, and so on on the property inspector.

If we need to continue inserting a special character object in the text object in the edit area, you can insert a new character object at that location by double-clicking the input text object, using the Pointer tool, and then inserting the text object in the edit area. When you click a character object on a special character panel only in the selected state, the insertion of a special character is also implemented, but in this case the character is automatically inserted at the beginning of the text object.

[Note:] If you use the menu text | Editor command for text editing, you cannot use the Insert character panel for special characters to be inserted.

　　3, the "style" Panel enhancements

Opening the style panel for Fireworks 8 is refreshing and adds a lot of styles that are definitely a boon for users who are too lazy to make filter adjustments and want to make a good impact.

You can do an experiment with these styles in the Style gallery, at the same time to observe the relevant settings on the property Inspector: First, the filter part of the setting, you can see the special effect of the implementation of what filter effect of the results, so that has itself is a broadening of the horizons, the expansion of ideas; second, pay attention to the use of filler material , and its fill handle is adjusted to have a deeper understanding of the filling technique.

When we use the style panel, we might try to do it in such a way that we give a example of a button to illustrate.

　　[Instance 1 Emboss button One example makes]

First look at some of the production of the button effect, and then introduce a brief production method.

　　source file Download (196KB, WinZip compressed file)

1, select the Toolbox "Rectangle" tool, with the press the "up" arrow on the keyboard, draw a rounded rectangular object in the edit area (or you can draw a rectangle first, and then make a rounded corner size adjustment by the value of the "rectangular roundness" on the property inspector), and fill the color, texture without having to take care of it, This can be done one step at a later stage through the style panel operation.

2, select the style of "style54" on the style panel, and click Apply the style.

3, after the application of the style, the editing area of the rectangular object generated as shown in the following figure, the prototype of a button has been completed.

4, the input button on the text object, font, color, size are based on their own use of the decision.

5, in the text object in the selected state, again apply the "style54" this style, the relief effect has been done, as shown in the following figure:

　　Summary: When we use the "style" panel, always used to the shape of a preset shape effect, the text object, using its preset text style effect, in fact, as long as we change the idea slightly, we will find that the original production of a better effect is not difficult, There are a lot of styles, we may wish to take time to test the test to see how easy the system to make what effect.

　　Use the library panel to invoke the new symbol example for Fireworks 8

After installing Fireworks 8, you will find 5 PNG files in the "Configuration/libraries" folder of the installation directory, including animations, buttons, bullets, themes, cell phone panels, and so on, if the preview will be a messy image effect, but if you use Fireworks 8 Open or import them separately, and then open the Library panel, what do you find? It turns out that each PNG file is a collection of component symbols. We can drag and drop it directly from the library panel to use it in the editor.

　　Tip: If you need to make a good animation, buttons, panels, etc. such as the export of components to retain, or share, you can use the Library panel on the right pop-up menu in the "Export symbol" command to export it to a PNG format file, in the future when used, You just need to import these PNG files directly.

Below we will use a concrete animation banner instance production process to make a clearer understanding of the usage of the library panel.

　　The production of animated banner in 21 cases

or first to see the animation effect: (Note: this example banner directly using the Dream Forum Y365design user Animation products, thank you! ）

　　source file Download (196KB, WinZip compressed file)

1, open Fireworks 8, new file, size of 468*60, background color with black.

2. Select Menu "File | import (shortcut key ctrl+r)" command, in the Open Import dialog box, locate "Look in" to the Configuration/libraries folder under the installation directory of Fireworks 8, and open Animations.png file.

3, the imported animation component objects, placed in the editing area centered, open the library panel can see which animation components are imported into the editing area.

4, press the key combination "Ctrl + A", all selected edit Area objects, delete them. Next, we use the animated components that come with Fireworks 8 to make the animation banner.

5, select the "Slate" component in the library panel, drag it to the editing area, and click OK for the warning box that appears, so that we quickly add an animation symbol to the edit area.

6, because the inserted components will be displayed according to their default size, so here you need to resize it, select the Zoom tool on the edit area, hold down the ALT key, drag and drop the Component object in the center direction, and shrink it because it is an animation symbol, so the rest of the animation's frames are automatically adjusted accordingly.

After zooming, the animation symbol object for the edit area is as follows, and you can make an adjustment to the position of the animation symbol object, in this case to center it.

7. Open the Frame panel, select the last frame, click the pop-up menu button in the upper-right corner of the frame panel, select the "Add Frame" command in the "Add Frame" dialog box, and do not make any adjustments, just click "OK" button.

8, go to the library panel, drag the Walk cycle component objects into the editing area, follow the steps above to reduce the adjustment to fit the size of the editing area, as shown in the following figure.

9. The inserted Walk cycle animation element is an animated character moving in situ, and we need to let the little Man "run". The operation is very simple, click the Red control point on the Component object, drag to the right of the edit area, if you need him to run out of the editing area, just drag to the editing area.

10. Open the Frames panel, select the last frame, and add a new frame, referring to the 7th step method.

11, in the editing area to enter related text objects, then on the frame panel, select the last frame, double-click its frame rate value "7", and in the pop-up frame rate setting box, set the value to 200, making the text object of the frame pause so that you can see what you want to say.

12, open the "Optimization" Panel, the export file format set to "GIF animation", direct export file, this example to end.

For the introduction of some of the panels, we are here, for other features of some enhancements to the panel, here is no longer introduced.