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Continuing my resurection of old autoshapes and commands, I give you the 3D Box Autoshape.

I stopped working on this not long after I initially started assuming that there was no point in using it since just about anything you could do with this autoshape could be also be created with 3D Primitives ... and more. Plus, Fireworks came with some shotty 3D box. Did it need another?

Well, in coming back to it, I thought I would give it some features making it worthy of existence, namely, vertex editing. Unlike 3D Primitives, you can interact with and change individual vertex positions making up the box. This will allow you to make irregular shapes and get more than just a "primitive."

Update: The issue concerning saved properties has been addressed and fixed.

With the recent revival of some of my old shapes (and the already available selection of autoshapes I have for download) I would imagine that somewhere, at some point or time one might find themselves in a position where they have a Fireworks MX2004 file with a non-standard autoshape but do not have that autoshape installed on their system. Now, the autoshape will still work as its functionality is embedded within the PNG, however, should you want to use that autoshape again in the future but have no means of downloading it (or you just may not know where to get it) you have no way of reusing it outside of coping pasting. This Steal Selected Autoshape Command solves that problem. If you have a document with a (free non commercial or paid for) autoshape which is not installed on your system, this command will do so creating an instance within your shapes panel.

If you want to try it out, go steal the hour glass shape from the hour glass ping. Using Steal Selected Autoshape is, by the way, basically the only way to obtain that shape as it is not (and will not) be posted in the Fireworks Extensions settings.

I missed this one last month but I think its important enough to bring up now. Last month Macromedia released its Search Engine SDK allowing search engines to search through and index Flash SWF files. This was a major issue in developing Flash sites and now one less to worry about. You can read more from an article on webpronews.com with an interview with Michael Marshall (a search engine big whig).

I wasn't going to post this shape because of its issues (below) but I figured I might as well with the rest I've posted recently. This is the Subselection Transform tool.

Like the Ruler autoshape, this is a tool rather than a shape. The Subselection Transform tool allows you to have a transormation tool for points in a subselection. It works much like the normal transformation tool, but due to deficiencies of the Fireworks authoring environement, there are the following caveats:

- There is *NO UNDO* when using this tool. Edits are permanent
- Fireworks does not refresh the screen after a path has been altered by this tool
- A control point on the tool cannot be selected if it lies of one of the paths of the items being edited
- If a control point is released over the path of an item being edited, the selection is lost

Not having an undo for the operation is a particularly nasty one. Use it if you dare. Check it out.

Macromedia just updated their once flagship authoring tool Director MX 2004. Fixes include:

* Improved stability through a few memory leak and crash bug fixes in DVD and Flash
* Web services can now be accessed via Flash assets in Director/projectors/Shockwave
* You can now create OS9 projectors from Windows
* Publishing improvements: you can now create OS9 projectors from Windows, specify your own custom publish setting defaults, and projectors now properly compress media when created
* Movie in a window improvements including fixes for all window types (dialog, tool and document)

A full list of changes can be found here. To get the update, click here.

Yet another autoshape. This time its the Ruler Autoshape which is more of a utility than a shape. It helps you measure lengths and angles etc. in a Fireworks document. Download

This, like the heart autoshape, is another extension I've had in the works but never got around to finishing. This lets you take element in Fireworks and duplicate it along a Fireworks vector path.



Current version is 0.9.0 so there still may be a few bugs. As with so many others, I may not come back to this unless something is horribly wrong or if through popular demand. Hopefully it can still be useful. Download

Here is a new auto shape that I've had in the works but never finished. Someone brought it up the other day and it gave me reason to come back to it. There are four control points though they only get you so far. Simple enough none the less. Download.

For all you Solaris OS users out there, Macromedia has just released Flash Player 7 for you to download (Sparc) (Intel x86) and be happy about. For more information see the press release.

A lot of Mozilla updates today to satisfy the web browsing and emailing world. First off, and most importantly, there's Firefox 1.0 PR (Preview Release). This is the lean mean cross-platform web browser that is well worth taking a look at if you haven't already. On top of that, you also have a new vrsion of Thunderbird (0.8) for email and a new update to the complete Mozilla suite brining it up to 1.7.3.