Create a terrific looking slide show with Fireworks

If you haven't already, download the free 30-day trial version of Adobe Fireworks CS3 . You will have to open an account with them first, which is free.

You will be doing a tutorial at the Adobe site, but first I must warn you about a few things you need to know about doing it:

Unzipping Files

At the beginning of the tutorial, you will need to download a zip file in order to do the tutorial. The zip files contains several compressed files that you will use. A zip file is often referred to as an archive.

  1. Save the zip file in a new empty folder as instructed by the tutorial. click on the link provided to do so, and then select Save.
  2. Then you will need to open it up to extract the files inside of the zip file ("archive").
  3. If you do not know how to open a zip file, just try double clicking on it, and a zip application that you already have (and forgot about) may open it up.
  4. But, if you do not have a utility to open one, try Quick Zip 4, which is free and I have used it and it has worked well for me. Mac users will need to try a zip application for the Mac - MacZip at the TuCows site is also free, although I have not used it. I use the $20 shareware zip utility called ZipIt.
  5. To learn how to use Quick Zip 4, launch it and then go to the Help menu in the upper left corner.
  6. Read these sections in Help and they will probably give you all the information you need to know for the purposes of completing this stage of the tutorial:
    1. Open Archive (an "archive" is a zip file)
    2. Extract File
  7. After you download the files, start Fireworks CS3.
  8. Go to the File menu and select Open.
    1. Locate the files that you just unzipped.
    2. In the file selector that opens, select them all by clicking and dragging around the file names, or selecting the first one, holding down shift and selecting the last one to select the full range.
  9. Then Open them up.

Here is important information for you to read prior to doing the tutorial:

  1. When you get to the Captions section click Apply (the tutorial fails to mention this).
  2. In the Export Options section it says to Click the Create button and to see Figure 10, but Figure 10 does not show that button. You will see it however when you are at that point in the tutorial.
  3. At the end, the show may not automatically open up in your browser. If that is the case, go to your Web browser's File menu and select Open. Navigate to the folder where you put the slide show, and open the index.html file. If you are using Windows XP, you may get a warning in a yellow crossbar near the top of the view area in the browser. Click on it and select Allow Blocked Content and then click Yes in the next dialog box that opens.

Now that you have all the caveats, proceed to the:

Slide Show Tutorial

When done, send me the slideshow.swf file that got created. I do not need any of the other files.

Your email subject line:

slide show - yourlastname - course code

Hope you enjoyed it. I think you can find several practical uses to use this for.