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This Fit to Path command allows you to take an element in fireworks and stretch its bounding box to 4 consecutive points along a path. The idea behind this command was to provide a way to add a kind of texture mapping to something like the 3D Box Autoshape.

I love this command. I use it all the time. It simply repeats your last action in your history panel. Sounds simple, and there's even a button in the history panel to do this for you, but as a command, you can set this up with a keyboard shortcut making the operation quick and easy to execute (I use Crtl+R).

When I was a kid I drew a lot. When I couldn't think of anything to draw, I would close my eyes and randomly mark 12 dots on a blank piece of paper. Then I would connect the dots and examine the resulting shape to figure out what it could be - what I would attempt to draw next. This shape attempts to do the same. I called it Inspire as it acts like (and was influenced by) my inspiration technique as a child. All it does is creates a random shape on your screen. If you feel you're running out of ideas, maybe this shape can send some inspiration your way.

Yesterday SE|PY, a free, feature rich text editor for Flash ActionScript, became available for download for the Mac. You can get the download from their SourceForge page.

Thanks Matthew for pointing out a post on Samuel Wan's site where Samuel exclaims his new found appreciation for Macromedia Fireworks and tells just how much he likes using it for UI sketching.

This weekend, I slept 7 hours and spent the rest of the time working in Fireworks to sketch UI concepts. The selection and text tools put Flash's selection tools to shame, and the grouping/layers/effects feature combinations are door-knob simple in the best sense possible. I can't think of a reason to use Photoshop again. ...

Toronto Star is reporting that Adobe is proposing a new image format which is to be called DNG which stands for Digital Negative Specification (see Adobe press release). The new open format is meant to be used for raw digital camera files. A converter is available free for download.

Now, this is all fine and wonderful and great especially for photographers, but I'd be lying if I said the name didn't bother me. It's rediculously close to Fireworks' native format PNG. Granted, I seriously doubt Adobe did this to undermined Macromedia's efforts, however, I can foresee future confusing between the two formats if DNG becomes standard. Not only do they sound the same to say, but even visually, all you would need to do is extend the left vertical line of the D downward and you have yourself a P. It would be hard to find an extension that was any closer.

Nevertheless, it's good to see Adobe supporting a public standard such as this.

I haven't had much chance to work on the new backend of the site with all the Fireworks extensions I've been releasing lately, but I do intend on doing so soon. While that conversion is taking place, I wont be "archiving" posts by month and I'm just going to let the current string ride until I get the new system in and running. Also, I'm sure many of you will be happy to know that I will be providing a RSS feed when its complete.

Uploaded a new Fireworks extension containing a couple of basic path commands I frequently use. I'll add more when I find/make them. Check them out.

Also, I have a script (called Open as PNG) that allows you to open a png file if it is named without a .png extension; something Fireworks normally doesn't allow. It actually came up in a forum but I never thought anyone would have use for it... still don't aside maybe for that person so I hadn't intended on posting it. However, if anyone thinks its worthy of going up, I'll package it and put it online.

As you might have guessed, the next version of Flash, the successor to Flash MX 2004, is in the works. Codenamed "8Ball," this version of Flash is said to be "focused on designers." Mike Chambers has a little blurb about this on his blog. Its from earlier last week so already there are a good selection of comments from other readers.

What would you like to see in the new version of Flash? I personally would love to be able to view multiple timelines at once. Of course, if consistent with past Flash releases, that wont be possible as for the past 3 or 4 versions of Flash, the interface has gooten bigger and bulkier - there just wouldn't be enough room on a computer screen for more than one timeline! And besides, I guess thats more of an animators wish than a designers.

It is my understanding that Fireworks does not allow you to set a default (or remember the last) save path for when saving new documents. Often this will throw you into Fireworks' own idea of what folder it thinks you should be saving to which is commonly about as far from the actual folder you wish to save to as you care to admit. This panel for Fireworks MX 2004 attempts to counter that.

What it does is detects when a new file is opened (or given focus) and, if that file has no save path (your basic untitled document), this panel will then automatically provide it with one pointing to the directory of your choice.