Always wondered why an indie app developer hasn't just decided to work their image-editor app up as "the new Fireworks."
Many other image-editor apps do now take Fireworks' same non-destructive hybrid editing approach... kind of. But they're always missing one thing or another. Either:
1. they aren't multiplatform (can't get "standard" adoption like Fireworks if you're macOS-only)
2. they don't go far enough with the vector editing capabilities (e.g. Fireworks allows you to apply arbitrary gradients/textures/other image assets as the stroke and fill of vector shapes)
3. they don't go far enough with the non-destructiveness (e.g. Fireworks applies filter-effects to both vector and raster layers, as non-destructive "filter layers" bound to a parent layer — effectively "functional lenses" for images; can edit the base layer "underneath" these transformation layers, and see the transformed output change as a result. Of course, you can always "flatten" the transformations into the layer, to then edit the post-transformed version of the layer. Though IMHO this could be taken even further, with "brush modifications" being just another kind of transformation layer!)
4. they use project file formats that consist of entire directory bundles, or file formats opaque to the OS preview mechanism. Fireworks just stored projects as an extension chunk of a PNG file; and every OS knows how to preview PNG files. (And, if you didn't care about the project, you could just treat the PNG file as a PNG file, putting it through ImageMagick or MSPaint or whatever, which would strip the optional chunks, thus "exporting" the project to PNG without needing the program that created it!)
Affinity Designer is a good vector/bitmap combo app. It closely parallels Illustrator features but adds in basic bitmap editing. If you pair it with Affinity Photo you get most of the Photoshop features. The same files can be shared with both without any loss of fidelity.
I’ve had the same question for years! There are a few tools that have tried over the years, but nothing that has stuck around.
And I get that the pixel-perfect design and slicing from the Fireworks era isn’t as useful in today’s world of responsive design and multiple screen sizes and variable screen densities, where CSS and JavaScript plays a much larger role, but I still wish we had a successor.
Because as you said, although most apps now do the hybrid vector/faster thing, nothing really matches what we had with Fireworks.
The only program I ever used that felt like it was really gunning for Fireworks was, weirdly, a BeOS-exclusive app called e-Picture. It was a little buggy, but still terrific. (That last sentence sums up the entire BeOS ecosystem circa 1999, granted, which was tiny yet still bigger than I suspect most people know.)
PNG format has a space for arbitrary metadata. Fireworks stored their proprietary save format inside this, and also rendered the file to flat PNG on save, meaning that you could preview fireworks files in anything that could read PNGs (although the file size would be huge).
Unfortunately not...For one, combining bitmap and vector editing is just not there...Also, while I like Sketch and have used it extensively, I haven't missed anything of it with Figma.
Agree. Macromedia products were amazing for their time. Dreamweaver, Flash (Creating flash apps including ActionScript), Fireworks with vector + bitmap, were all very cool until Adobe acquired them
The largest Pictionary-like web app for the good part of a decade or so (early 2000s to early 2010s) was a Shockwave/Director app. Newer clones are yet to match its amazing features. Unfortunately isketch.net got too old for the newer generations to pick it up. I can only guess what happened to the site. The technical debt must have been too great to port it to a newer platform, or perhaps the devs/maintainers moved on.
This was already basically Sketch years and years before Sketch even existed. They killed it because Adobe as a company has a complete lack of vision and even understanding of the tools they own.
This is 100% right. Fireworks was Sketch with better bitmap/filter/styling support. Removing it was a cost saving move right as Sketch/Figma were coming to own UI design.
I still use my copy of Fireworks for everything graphics related that I need. Yes, it doesn't do everything as well compared to modern suites but the UI was just so easy for a developer to use. Even Homesite is still better than most editors I've ever used.
To me, Sketch is a spiritual successor of Fireworks.
I loved Fireworks, but it had far too many quirks that weren't improved, and when I discovered Sketch I was amazed how many thing that did bother me a lot in Fireworks were made just right in Sketch.
