Macromedia VS Adobe

[xing]

Hi all. I know many of you here are professional graphics designers. I just wanna know your opinion as to which design studio is better to use. Im currently using Fireworks and Freehand (since I'm using 'em for the GUI of my project implemented in Director). I've heard that Photoshop and Illustrator are better and more powerful, though.

Anyone care to give me a few major differences between Macromedia and Adobe products?

Thanks.

[xing]

ei guys! any comments?

[Bloit]

i am a fanatical user of both products but they both have different uses. Fireworks is brilliant for the web eg making buttons and banners and headers (stuff like that) but adobe is much better for effects and photo editing) heres one of my sites where i use both

(the site isn't done yet and is very simple cause i can't be assed but it uses fireworks buttons and header and the main image on the first page was done in photoshop (it was my mates birthday and he was drunk so we though it would be best mwahahaha!!)

Hope this helps

(they work very well together)



..MY site

[xing]

thanks for posting ur opinion bloit. but not so nice webpage, though.

[Bloit]

thanks for posting ur opinion bloit. but not so nice webpage, though.

thats ok.....
..
i am looking into ways of making pages faster but still look good u got any ideas? (i know it looks **** but it is better than nothing! lol i'm going to make the movies stream instead of downloading too.

[xing]

Now you're the one asking me questions, heh... lol Well what I usually do when I develop a site is to create a template that contains mere blank tables and my logo. Then I do the default.css next. That way, I don't have to worry about the formatting each time I create a new page. All I have to do is to fill in the contents of the page and some images.

Oh wait a sec, what did you mean by faster? Did I get you right, or you meant faster-loading as in graphics and other multimedia contents load faster? You are using Fireworks to optimize your images, aren't you?

[Bloit]

yep i am using fireworks on all the images apart from the main photos. i will convert them too i think that should do the trick! yeah i have used before but i cna't be bothered on this one! though i might be useful. do u think that a style sheet would speed things up?

i seem to have taken over your thread!

[xing]

you mean you didn't use style sheets for that? ah..actually style sheets WILL speed up the design time. i dunno if it also speeds up the loading. you can also optimize the image on the main page. import it in fireworks and you'll see significant difference in file sizes. ahihihi...good luck to both of us...