Subtitles of the Movie

As I reviewed in the previous movie, Fireworks has a variety of vector tools for drawing vector objects. These tools are organized here in the Vector section of the Tools panel. With these tools you can draw basic shapes, freeform paths, or complex shapes, by plotting points one by one using the Pen tool. You can also draw Auto Shapes, which are vector object groups that have special controls for adjusting their attributes, so I'll be reviewing each of these tools and the way to use them to create a variety of vector objects in Fireworks CS3 in this movie. Use the Line, Rectangle, or Ellipse tools to draw basic shapes. The Line tool here is at the top. This will create straight lines. You can create horizontal or vertical lines by holding down the Shift key while you drag your mouse, and that will create either horizontal, straight horizontal lines, or straight vertical lines. That's kind of a convenient little technique for making sure that your lines are flat, or aligned vertically. The Rectangle tool is below the Line tool. It may be hidden. There's a menu there that you can press to select the Rectangle tool, which is at the top and that's the default, but if you select another tool from this menu that tool will show here as an icon. The Rectangle tool creates rectangles. Let's go ahead and choose a fill color so you can see these easier. In this case, if you hold down the Shift key, the Rectangle tool creates perfect squares, no matter how I draw my mouse I'm creating perfect squares there. I can delete all these vector objects by drawing a marquee around them, using the Selection tool, and then pressing the Delete key on the keyboard. The rectangle tool is a little bit unusual in that it creates grouped objects. In order to modify a point using the Sub-selection tool, which I'll talk about more in detail later, I need to first ungroup it. Notice if I try to modify a point, Fireworks warns me, To edit a rectangle's points, it must be ungrouped first. click OK to ungroup. Let's undo that, and also you can ungroup it by selecting the rectangle and then choosing here, Modify, Ungroup from the Main menu. Since I've already ungrouped it, let's undo that again. Let's see if I can ungroup that. Yeah, there we go. Ungroup it, and now I can take the sub-selection tool and modify individual points, converting the rectangle into a polygon. Underneath that is the Ellipse tool for creating ellipses. If you hold down the Shift key, this tool will create perfect circles, like so. Notice that these are not grouped, so I can take the Sub-selection tool and modify individual points of my ellipse or circle to modify it. Let's go ahead and clean up my canvas here. Draw a marquee around those vector objects. The last tool here is the Polygon tool. Notice that with the Polygon tool selected here I can modify the number of sides that I'll draw on the polygon. That's a little abstract, and if you go ahead and draw out a polygon using the tool notice that you don't have this option here in the Properties Inspector, but if I select the Polygon tool first, and sometimes this doesn't go. It didn't actually show me there, but let's go ahead and de-select everything. There we go. Select the Polygon tool again, and now I can choose some of these sides and also the angles of the sides. You can also change the polygon to a star, so I'm going to draw now a seven-pointed star. This is a little bit tricky, and my students often forget where to change this setting because you have to deselect stuff and then click on the Polygon tool again to get these options, and then the drop-down here is also a little bit obscure, changing between polygon and star; so there's a 7-sided polygon. Let's now make an octagon. Change that to 8 by typing 8 there in the sides option. So there's my octagon. Let me go ahead and clear out my objects here to make some more space on my canvas. Now below the Polygon tool here, in the vector section, you have your Auto shapes here, which I'll be covering in more detail in the next movie, but you've also got an option here for creating rounded rectangles. You can draw rectangles with rounded corners by using this tool. And again, the rounded rectangle tool will draw rectangles as grouped objects, so like before, to modify any of these points you'll need to first ungroup that object by choosing Modify, Ungroup. Now I can take the sub-selection tool and modify the points that constitute the rounded rectangle independently of each other. Notice that Fireworks is giving you cues here that this is ungrouped. Compare that now to my grouped rectangle, the rounded rectangle. Notice also you've got these diamond shapes here. That's a part of the Auto Shapes capability, which I'll be covering next. Yet another way to make a rounded rectangle is to choose the Rectangle tool. Again, this is a little bit hidden and obscure, so I actually think that the Rounded Rectangle option here is easier, but choose the Rectangle tool, draw out your rectangle, and then once you've drawn out your rectangle, notice that there's a Rectangle Roundness option here, and you can adjust that to increase, or decrease the roundness of those edges. This is tricky because this Rectangle Roundness is not visible until after you create your rectangle. Notice that if I choose the Rectangle tool, that option's not available here in the Properties Inspector. It only becomes visible after you've created the rectangle. I think that's a little bit tricky and hidden, so I typically use, instead of this technique, again, the Auto Shape down here, Rounded Rectangle. Let me now move on to the next movie and go over in more detail these vector tools here below the polygon tool, which are collectively referred to as Auto Shapes.