<p>After developing software for some time now, I feel like I should mention the software that most helped me until now. This is just a personal opinion, so don&#8217;t start flamming me for this, okay? Well, although I use Notepad++ and Textmate for writing code, I&#8217;m not talking about neither, and I&#8217;m not going to talk about Visual Studio which is a great <span class="caps">IDE</span>, and a wonderful tool for designing desktop applications. The best software that has helped me in my programming until now was&#8230; Fireworks, that&#8217;s right! Macromedia&#8217;s, now Adobe&#8217;s software for designing web graphics.</p>

<p>So howcome a <em>designer</em> application has helped in your programming? Well, I don&#8217;t do low-level programming, my focus in on web programming, so the interface is very important. I find Fireworks the most useful tool because it allows me to get some graphics done very fast and easily, so I can focus on what I really want: to code.</p>

<p>So why Fireworks and not Photoshop? Photoshop is indeed more powerful that Fireworks, but it is also more complex, and I&#8217;m not a designer, I just want quick icons, or logos, or some fancy artwork for my software, I don&#8217;t want to make some artistic and amazing drawings. And right now, I can archieve everything in Fireworks you can in Photoshop. The only feature I miss is Brushes, but I can emulate it using some workarounds that take too much time.</p>

<p>This is one of the features Adobe could add to Fireworks. I&#8217;ve been using it since the MX 2002 version through the MX 2004 and CS3 and I find no real difference between them. Couldn&#8217;t they just spend some time on this wonderful product? Of course it doesn&#8217;t sell like Photoshop and is maybe overpriced for its target audience, but I&#8217;m sure they can manage it&#8230; I&#8217;m sure there are other Fireworks lovers around wishing for this too&#8230;</p>

<p><b>PS:</b> Ok, I had to ruin my first linkless post with some sort of interesting link. Here it is: <a href="http://www.guuui.com/posting.php?id=2112">Fireworks is a great prototyping tool for interaction desginers</a></p>