Hey everyone! This post is a bit different (more than usual I mean...) and is a personal request to help me get one of my friends (Keri, The Canadian Explorer) on the most popular and best late night show in Canada: CBC's The Hour with Georges Stromboulopoulos. This is a long shot, but I really think Keri deserves the publicity and would be a great guest on the show. But why do this? Who is this Keri? Here's a little history that led to this crazy idea...

Keri was introduced to me on Twitter a while ago by another friend of mine, Mario Bourque. She is great person and a very endearing girl, and she's come up with a crazy and fantastic project which entails travelling and exploring Canada in her car (she no longer has a fixed address), filming as much as she can and putting edited videos of it all on her site in addition to blogging about it. Her car is her studio and this all makes for a very compelling read and watch. You can see it all on her Canadian Explorer site along with her own explanation and plan she put up as a video manifesto. As I said, this is a slightly crazy idea and anyone who knows me knows I love crazy stuff ;)

But as I got to know Keri better, I started to get this crazy idea of my own. Isabelle and I have discovered the show The Hour a few months ago and have been fans of it since. One of its core purpose beyond entertainment is to promote Canada, Canadians and worthwhile causes and people in general. Exactly like the Canadian Explorer. So what could be better than put the two together?

So if you would like to help, I decided to start a little grassroots campaign to try and get Keri to appear on The Hour, or to at least to get George to mention her on the air and give her and her project some well deserved publicity. Either outcomes would be great but getting her on the show would be truly awesome! You do not need to be Canadian to help either. You may get the CBC if you live in northern USA and you can see a large backlog of full episodes on the CBC's site at the following URL. The Hour really is a great show and at the very least, you might be entertained...

http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/fullshow.php

Now, how can you help?

The first step I took and that you can take is to write an email to George himself through the short form on The Hour's site and recommending that he check out Keri and invite her on the show.

http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/georgereadsthemail.html

Make sure you include her site's URL ( http://www.thecanadianexplorer.com ) as well as her Twitter ( https://twitter.com/KeriCDN ). The page says that George may not read all the email he gets (how could he), but if he gets at either mine or anyone else's who decides to write him as well to recommend Keri, we may get him to go to her site and maybe even talk to Keri on the phone... and that crazy thing just might happen!!!

The other thing I've done and I would appreciate you do as well is to use the show's email address to write them directly. That email address is: thehour@cbc.ca. Also, don't forget Twitter as this is where it all started for me after I met and got to know Keri a little better. You can tweet to George here @strombo Again, it's a matter of getting Keri and The Canadian Explorer's name to his attention.

Finally, if you feel like really making a difference, why not send The Hour a post card or a letter through good old snail mail? The address is as follows:

THE HOUR
c/o CBC Television
P.O. Box 500, Station "A"
Toronto, Ont.
M5W 1E6

Again, this is a long shot but nothing will happen if we do not try. At the very least, I'd like to get George to mention Keri and the Canadian Explorer on the show and, if luck (or the power of though) is on our side, get him to invite her on the show.  In any case, I really think we need to get the word out about The Canadian Explorer as her endeavour is a worthwhile one and George is also a big proponent of Canadian pride and greatness. Once he hears about Keri... he will HAVE to invite her on the show!

If you have read this far. Thank you! Now, please take the next step, it will only take you a few minutes!

I could not imagine my creative process without Adobe Fireworks. I have been using that application since version 2.0 sometime in 1999. 10 years ago, Fireworks was not an obvious choice but the workflow advantages over Photoshop were immediately evident to me and my creative process never was the same. Unfortunately, it took almost all those years for Fireworks to be taken seriously in the industry. Being a Fireworks evangelist 5 or 6 years ago felt like preaching in the desert. But not anymore. 

Today, Fireworks is finally thriving. After a couple false starts and dud versions (yes I'm looking at you Fireworks 8 and CS2!), versions CS3 and CS4 have finally brought Fireworks to a level where many industry heavyweights are now paying attention. It is also crossing over into new fields like User Experience and Interaction Design where many practitioners who are not traditional Web designers (read visual/graphic designers) use Fireworks for rapid prototyping and quickly iterating interface and interaction designs.

It is an exciting time for Fireworks which proves that Adobe's decision to keep it alive after acquiring Macromedia was the right one. Not only that but the application itself has finally started to really improve again after stagnating for a few years under Macromedia's watch. There are new books being written about it or with chapters about it, new (and not so new) Web sites covering how to use it or who is using it. Can't wait to see what's in store in Fireworks' future.

If you have never tried it, do yourself a favor and do so. If you are coming from Photoshop, leave your pixel pushing Photoshop mindset at the door and embrace Fireworks vector based workflow. Regardless of Fireworks' very capable bitmap editing tools, its real strength lies in its hybrid workflow based on a vector based core. Until you really give it a try, you will never know how much difference working in a vector based environment does for any kind of layout work.

I've started working on a large project as part of a team of 5 people recently. Aside from doing the visual design, I'm working on the UX strategy and information architecture with an IA and UX designer from the US. We're of course creating most of our documentation, user flows, wireframes and prototype in Axure RP Pro. He and I have been working on the same project file using the new Shared Project feature from Axure 5.x and collaborating on it through a free Subversion server (www.myversioncontrol.com). That works very well and, once a day or sometimes more often, I'll generate the Axure prototype and FTP it to a password protected sub-domain on my site so that other team members can consult it. There's also other project file linked from a page in the prototype. But there was one thing missing from this process.

The thing is that, as of now, Axure prototypes do not handle comments on the project from other stakeholders as some online prototyping applications like Protoshare do. But recently, I've discovered a little script that enables us to integrate comments quite easily using the free Protonotes service. That script is called Head Insert and has been developed by another Axure enthusiast named Joshua Morse. He originally published version 1.2 in this blog post and recently updated the script to version 1.31 which can be found here.

What the script does is add a small bit of JavaScript code provided by Protonotes when you signup (for free) to the head of each appropriate HTML file in the generated Axure HTML prototype. Then, when a user loads the prototype in their browser, they can see comments added by others, edit/reply to them and add their own through a toolbar created through the Protonotes script. Using variables in the script you can control whether the toolbar or the actual comments appear on page load by default. The comments themselves are saved in a MySQL database on ProtoNotes' server or, optionally, on your own. It works very well and the great thing is that this is all free!

Today I just launched my wife's site after working on it on and off for months. Isabelle is a very talented artist-painter and this project has been a labour of love for us :)

The design is minimalist and the layout is very sparse. I wanted to put the emphasis on her artwork where it belongs. There's a small Flash slideshow on the right that acts as a teaser but the gallery itself is all HTML/CSS/JavaScript (jQuery) and fully accessible with JavaScript off.

We are still working on minor text content adjustments and I’m having issues with the jQuery validation script on the contact page in IE6. I may remove the client-side validation on that page altogether as I do a server-side check as well (no nicely formatted messages but it works).

In any case, please visit the site at the following URL. As you will see, Isabelle does a lot of special order work (portraits and other things) so do not hesitate to contact her to discuss your project.

URL: http://www.isabellelarin.com

Dan Harrelson from Adaptive Path has written a very interesting blog post titled Rapid Prototyping Tools and what makes good prototypes. My long time favorite Adobe Fireworks is mentionned along with Axure RP Pro (which is a newer tool in my arsenal) but also several others including online tools like Balsamiq Mockups.

What is most interesting to me in the post is the first part before he lists the tools and where he explains the principles of good prototyping and why it should be done in the first place. For me, this comes following a very well received presentaion at the IA Summint 2009 from Fred Beecher titled Integrating Effective Prototyping Into Your Design Process and which I followed through live tweeting as I couldn't attend.

Both Harrelson and Beecher press the important point that creating interactive prototypes helps us design better user experiences as they help validate a design direction early in the process before investing a lot of money and effort into design or development solutions that may not yield the best results possible.

I strongly suggest you take a look at Dan Harrelson's blog post and go through Fred's presentation slides. They may put you on a track to improve your own process and deliver better solutions to your clients.

The new version 5.5 of Axure RP Pro has been released a couple days ago after being in public beta for a few months. It's a very significant upgrade in terms of new features and is free for existing customers with a current license.

Noteworthy features include the ability to load and create external widget libraries (similar to Visio stencils for exemple) that can be shared with coworkers or other Axure users. The new version ships with a bunch of libraries based on the Yahoo Design Patterns Library.

Other improvements include changes to the design environment like the addition of a size and location panel directly in the UI, a Dynamic Panels manager palette and more. Check the changelog for all the details and download the new version here.

I am a bit late with the 2008 yearly reviews but this one will be shorter than last year's. As 2008 has been a very big year for me I wanted to blog about it for posterity and this post will focus on basically 2 things. I'll probably post more about specific discoveries (software, sites, etc) later but for now...

Freelancing

As everyone who reads this blog or follows me on Twitter knows, I quit a 20 years job last August to pursue my career as a Web design professional. It's something I'd been doing for over 12 years anyway, slowly building up my skill set and client base. Once I felt ready, the decision to dive into the great freelancing unknown was surprisingly easy and I've never been happier in my life!

My work and my relationships with my clients make my job the most rewarding thing I've ever done. Music used to be the center of my life and had been for more years than I care to know... but since I decided to move on from it in 2000; I'd been missing that intangible but very strong sense of purpose in my life. That strong sense of purpose is back now and is driving me to try and become better at what I do every day. It had been a long time since I felt that way, like I'm really making a difference for the better in my clients' lives. It's a fantastic feeling but with it also comes a great sense of responsibility.

However, not everything in my new career is easy every day. I have to learn to deal with new kinds of stress like the lack of a steady weekly pay check. I have not lacked any money in the last 5 months and new projects keep coming to me but I've certainly worried about it more than I used to. Budgeting is the key that keeps my financial life sane.

The other major issue that I'm facing in my freelancing career is related to the other side of the working alone coin. On one hand, I love working from home in peace and making my own schedule but some days I really miss the social interaction of working in a "real" office... 

Twitter

I've actually stated using Twitter last June before I started freelancing full time. Like I explained in my previous 2 posts on the issue (here and here), I'd resisted it for a long time and didn't see the value at first. I'll talk later about more technical aspects of Twitter like desktop clients and the like but for now, I'll concentrate on the social aspects.

I have tried other social sites but Twitter is the only one I'm really sticking with for a couple reasons. The first is that it became a "presence" in my life. Unlike many people I am not afraid of solitude but, working alone day in and day out can become boring and lonely. I usually keep TweetDeck running on my laptop at my side while I work on my desktop. So when I need to take a short mental break, I stop my timer and check out what's being talked about in my stream. I may shoot off a few replies, tease some of my friends or quickly follow-up on an interesting topic.

Other times, I may stumble upon a technical issue or have an idea I'd like to bounce off someone else. I just tweet about it and within minutes and sometimes seconds; I get useful answers and move on with my work. In short, in the last 5 months, Twitter has become an invaluable resource for me on many levels. Despite some of the technical difficulties the service runs into at times (fail whale!), to me it is the most successful social media service I've come across so far and I couldn't go without.

In short, 2008 has been a very big year for me and 2009 is starting great as well. I'm learning all about faith. Faith in myself but mostly faith in life and its ability to bring me what I want and need. I wouldn't have it any other way. For the first time in my life, I feel truly free...

The upcoming 5.5 version of Axure RP Pro has been made public and is available for download. For anyone who's been interested by Axure and wanted to try it, now is a great time to do so. The beta is rock solid and, if I understand the following blog post on Axure's site correctly, it will expire only on February 28th which would give you quite a bit longer than a regular 30 days trial to test it out. That's a good thing since Axure is a pretty complex and powerful application you have to spend a little time with to appreciate.

For more details including links to the download as well as to 3 blog posts describing the new features in detail, see the following:

Axure RP Pro 5.5 Beta

Earlier this week I finally published the new version of my Web design business site, webfocusdesign.com which I've worked at on and off for several months now. The site finally reflects my current company branding and sports the same visual identity as my business card, invoices and other client facing print materials. It also finally showcases some of my recent and ongoing projects unlike the previous version of the site whcih had projects that were at least 2 or 3 years old in the portfolio and didn't reflect where I or Webfocus Design are at  now. After going freelance full time in mid August, I finally feel like I am in it completely and it feels very good.

Like many designers out there, I find it very hard to design for myself. A personal site like pixelyzed can be and was a fun endeavor to create but a business site has to have much more clearly defined goals and follow a more rigorous process. Furthermore, writing marketing copy for ourselves is very difficult for a lot of us. But I had a lot of help for that and I would especially want to thank Erica Holden who has helped me write much better copy with more impact than what I already had. Her professionalism and enthusiasm have made this tedious writing process a lot easier for me as she took a large part of it upon herself. Erica, you rock!

Many of my other Twitter friends have been great help towards the end of the process when came time to tweak functionality and test in various browsers. I have yet to implement some of the suggestions I've had.

The site is not quite complete yet as I left a few areas unfinished in order to go back to client work. I still need to flesh out the portfolio and add the online version of my Project Planner. I also want to add a blog for my clients and that one will be in both French and English. Those will be done as I have time over the coming weeks. But even in an unfinished state, this is the best version of webfocusdesign.com I've designed so far and I'm very proud of it. I finally feel like I'm really in business...

So thanks again to all who have encouraged me to finish what I started months ago. I hope to be able to repay your kindness by somehow helping you with your own projects someday. Social media can be so much more than buzzwords and forced "viral" marketing...

As I mentioned in my recent "My Top 10 Web Design Tools" post, I have started using Axure RP Pro for creating highly interactive prototypes, wireframes, site maps , flow charts and specifications. It is a fantastic application with a lot of depth that can create very complex prototypes.

Axure also has a growing community around it and, in recent months, several people and organizations have started to create libraries of reusable components that ease the effort of creating simple or complex interactive widgets from scratch in Axure. A list of the best of these resources recently has been published on A Clean Design's site and can be found here: http://www.acleandesign.com/2008/11/the-top-10-axure-resources/

One of those resources is the open source Axlib project who's aim is "to create a robust design library of common interaction patterns for use with Axure RP". Axlib is both a Google Group as well as a Google Code repository for the latest version of the librairy. The reason I mention Axlib specifically is that there's a great conversation going on now in the Google group about how those open-source Axure librairies should be standardized both in terms of how they are created and documented and anyone involved in UXD that is using Axure or is interested in using it at some point should participate. Some of the issues under discussion include:

• Width of widgets (assumed page width, perhaps)
• General look and feel, perhaps a simple color palette
• Level of fidelity
• Level of interactivity
• Use and documentation of Variables
• Use and documentation of Raised Events
• Fonts and font size

If you are an Axure user, give this and other librairies a try and get involved in the community!

Today, MindJet has released two new products: MindManager 8 for Windows and MindManager Web.

I've blogged about MindManager before as it is one of the main tools in my creative arsenal. If you haven't tried MindManager before or have been curious about it, now is the best time to try it and dive into mind mapping. Here's a few of the main new features in the new version.

What's New in MindManager 8

Maps sharing: One of the main limitations of using MindManager before was that it was diffiult to share those maps with people who did not have it. Exporting to Word and other formats could only go so far and, for me at least, my MindManager maps did not create good client deliverables even if they were very useful to me internally.

With MindManager 8, we can now export maps directly to PDF with embedded interactive maps (a Flash movie from the map is embedded in the PDF). This is huge for me. We now can share our maps in a self contained and secure file format and email them to anyone or make them easily downloadable from any Web site. Secondly, MindManager 8  also export directly to Flash itself so we can add interactive maps to our Web sites. You can check out how that feels by looking at the map on the MindManager 8 product page on MindJet's Web site.

Integrated Microsoft Office File Editing & Embedded Web Browser: MindManager 8 can now display Web pages or edit MS Office documents right from within MindManager's interface. For me this is a very welcome addition as I often want to add links to Web pages to map topics. Now I don't have to copy paste as there's an "Add to Map" button right in the embedded browser.

Integrated Content & services: It is now possible to add search topics, RSS feeds or connections to databases directly in maps by using what MindJet calls "Map Parts" that connect to search engines and other services or data stores. That way, topics in map can be kept fresh and relevant with updated data instead of being static.

Web services Map Parts included in MindManager 8 include Google, Yahoo and Windows Live (Search); MySpace and Facebook (social networking) and Amazon, eBay and StrikeIron D&B (eCommerce). Database linkers include Access, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, Excel and text files.

These are just a few of the new features included in MindManager 8. I will post again on why you would want to use an application like MindManager but, in the meantime, you can read my previous posts on mind mapping from last year when I started using MindManager 7:

• My Search for Mind Mapping Software
  
• Mind Mapping as a Creative and Project Management Tool
• Another Piece of the Mind Mapping for Project Management Puzzle

There is a meme popping on Twitter and the blogosphere where some Web professionals are wondering if it is a good thing to listen to music while working or not. I had been reflecting on that very thing recently so this comes at a timely moment for me.

Of course, to a point this comes down to personal preferences but it seems that, musicians like me respond to music in a different way than non-musicians which makes it harder for us to concentrate on the work at hand when listening to music. For example, look at the quote from Mark W. Shead in the “Should we listen to music while working?” post on Designer Daily. Thanks to Mirko Humbert on Twitter for the heads up on that article. He makes the point that if background noise is needed, the sound of waves or rain or something equally neutral is better than music as he states that he simply cannot perform tasks requiring high levels of concentration while listening to music.

I myself generally like to listen to music while working but whether I do or not depends directly on the kind of task I am working on at that moment and how I feel on that particular day. If I’m more tired for example I’ll have a harder time concentrating to begin with so I may prefer the silence. Furthermore, my music listening habits have evolved over time and as my circumstances changed. When I was still a student living with my parents, I used to need to put some music on at a reasonably low volume to “shield” myself from the noises in the rest of the house. That “wall of sound” effect permitted me to reach incredible levels of concentration. When I was in the “zone” like that, a train could have passed in my room and I would not have noticed. I’m not exaggerating. As a teenager I could reach levels of concentration that I simply cannot attain anymore which makes me very jealous of my teenage self…

Nowadays, I’m a full time freelancer working from home in a very quiet environment. I need no shielding from ambient noises but I still need the music a lot of the times for different reasons not the least of which is that it can get lonely working alone in complete silence. But what I listen to is directly related to what I’m doing. For example, when I’m doing simple administrative tasks or anything around the office not requiring great concentration I’ll listen to either my MP3 player on shuffle (very varied stuff in there) or to XM Radio (I particularly love XM Café and the alternative channels). But if I’m in developer mode writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript or ColdFusion code, I usually switch to mostly non-vocal music and for that I really love the XM Radio Chill channel. The fact that I do not know a lot of the music helps me “ignore” it better. Like I said before, I’ll often just turn off the music if I don’t feel it is helping at a particular moment.

When I’m in design mode, I usually like more upbeat or heavier music. I rarely design in silence. The musical stimulus really helps idea generation. The style here is very varied and depends a lot more on my own mood than the type of project I’m working on. Again here, I often turn to XM or to my MP3 player but with a more focused genre depending on the day.

So, what about you? Is music part of your work process too or do you need complete silence to be able to work?

I had already started working on a blog post with my top 10 most useful Web design tools but, like many other things these days, I had continually postponed finishing it in favor of "more important things". Like client work... ;-)

But I saw a post today on the Visualrinse blog that tackled the same topic so it prompted me to finish mine.

As mentioned in the above blog post, we all have our own favorite working methods, tricks and tools for completing projects and, as I have already mentioned here before, I have really tried to refine my process in the last year or so and find the tools that really help me get my work done, especially since I am a one man shop and need to tackle both the design and development aspects of my projects as well as managing them and my clients. Now that I am freelancing full time, I have really started to develop a process that works for me. So here are the tools I could not live without in my Web design and development work.

1. Mindjet MindManager Pro / JCV Gantt Pro. I stated using MindManager in the summer of 2007 and it has quickly become one of my most useful tools. I use it for several things like brainstorming ideas, creating projetc management documents like a projet's creative brief, work breadown structure or tasks, site maps and more. Each project gets a "dashboard" map that links to all the other project related maps, documents or folders. From the tasks map I move to the JCV Gantt Pro addin to create the project schedule and determine the cost of the project. MindManager is the best "knowledge repository" application I've ever tried and I now wonder what I did without it before I found it.
   
2. Axure RP Pro. Axure is the most recent addition to my toolset. It takes off where MindManager leaves off for me. As great as MindManager is for my own internal processes I realized it did not create great deliverables for clients. Axure is the best tool I found to create site maps and flow charts but its main purpose is wireframes, functional interactive prototypes and documentation and it really excels at it. I'm working on a appointment/calendar app for a current site project and prototyping it in Axure will save me a lot of coding time later. There's nothing like showing a working, clickable and interactive version of a site feature to a client, even if it is fake, to work out the kinks and nail down expectations.
3. Adobe Fireworks. The mainstay in my toolset for the last 10 years and my most used app along with Dreamweaver. I really could not do my job without Fireworks. It completely replaced Photoshop for me for Web design and layout work over 10 years ago and I have never looked back. Its hybrid raster/vector workflow as well as Web centric focus make it the most efficient design app I have ever used. It's like Photoshop/Illustrator and InDesign all rolled up into one killer app but just for the Web. CS4 will be released soon and it really will be the best version ever.
4. Adobe Dreamweaver. Unlike Fireworks which I pretty much adopted immediately after trying version 2.0, it took me a long time to warm up to Dreamweaver. I had been using HomeSite which was a great code editor for a long time but I had to use a separate FTP application to upload sites and was looking for ways to automate some of the repetitive work. Around the release of Dreamweaver 4 but especially the next one, Dreamweaver MX (6.0), the application had evolved in such a way that it basically replaced HomeSite for me. Now it is a full fledged Web authoring environment I couldn't live without anymore. It has the right balance of code centric features, visual editing and a lot of other features around those that just make it a true powerhouse. The new CS4 version which is in public beta right now adds very cool new features that are already making my life easier.
5. ColdFusion. I am more of a designer and front end developer than a backend developer but I still have to wear that hat. I have tried Perl and used ASP in the past and although it was OK it got tedious for me after a while. I also tried PHP as it's very popular but I really don't like it at all for some reason. It really didn't click with me and I strongly dislike the syntax. When I started working with ColdFusion it's like a light bulb was turned on for me. The syntax made sense and it could do more in fewer lines of code than ASP (and most other server-side scripting languages) ever could. In the last few years, ColdFusion has kept evolving into one of the most powerful server-side development solutions around with many buit-in features you need plugins for in other platforms. It really rocks my world and has empowered me to build better Web sites.
6. Web Developer Toolbar. Although Firefox is not my main browser (Opera is... and Google Chrome is gainning ground), no Web designer/developer should be without this utility.
7. Firebug. Another amazing Firefox extension that probably needs no introduction. The Inspect functionality alone makes this an absolute must-have. If you're not sure what CSS rule affect a misbehaving element, you'll find it with Firebug's Inspect. Not far behind is Opera's new Dragonfly feature which is still in alpha. Similar to Firebug but built right into Opera 9.5+.
8. Genopal. Going back to designer tools, Genopal is one of those rare finds you wonder how you did without before discovering it. Genopal is a small application used to create color schemes. Nothing earth shattering here but, it does it in a very unique way that I had never seen before. This is the most intuitive color tool I have ever used and I urge anyone struggling with creating good color schemes to try it. I use the desktop Pro version but there's also an online version on the site. This one is a true little gem.
9. Studiometry. What would I do without this amazing application? Studiometry is the administrative center of my world. Projects, clients details, contacts, timers, invoicing, reports and more, Studiometry tracks every detail of my professional work and helps me keep organized.
10. jQuery. This "little" JavaScript framework has rocked my world. Like ColdFusion but on the front end, it has empowered me to create complex interactivity faster and easier than I ever could before. I have tried others but jQuery just clicked for me and I keep being amazed at what I can accomplish with it.

So the above are my own must-haves. The list is not complete though so here's a few honorable mentions for other applications that are central to my work :

One is Outlook 2007 for keeping up with not only email but client contacts, calendar and categorized tasks lists  (following the GTD principles). It's the first app I launch in the morning and the last one I ckeck at night.

Another is FeedDemon, the incredible RSS feeds aggregator from Nick Bradbury and NewsGator. In our field, fighting information overload has become a real issue, at least it has for me. FeedDemon helps me keep informed by following the myriad of sites I am interested in but also through keyword feeds that gather information about specific topics I'm interested in.

Lastly, I need to mention Twitter and the TweetDeck client. I've been a very late Twitter adopter as I didn't "see" the use and thought it would be a waste of time. But now that I work on my own full time, I enjoy the connection to the people I follow. Like FeedDemon, TweetDeck enables me to separate my Twitter "stream" into groups. But furthermore, it enables me to keep watch on particular topics in the "public stream" by letting me add colomns based on specific keyword searches. It took me a long time to get on Twitter but now, TweetDeck is always running on my laptop while I work on my main machine.

Well that's it for me at this time. What are your own preferred tools that you just cannot live without?

Although the new version of Fireworks has been in public beta for a while now, I haven't talked much about it here yet. Not because it's not an exciting release, quite the opposite, but only because until a month ago I was basically working 2 full time jobs and since I turned a full time freelancer, I've worked hard at setting up my new business, rebranding its image and getting into my freelance groove. I'll talk about all that later but I'm just saying that I just did not have the time to write anything meaningful about Fireworks CS4. This post is just a start.

Anyone who's read this blog before or had to "endure" some of my long winded tirades about Fireworks's development and direction in the last few years knows that I just haven't been happy at all about a lot of what happened and a lot of the decisions that have been made during the development of the last 3 versions. On one hand, I have been a long time evangelist of the product but, on the other hand, one of its harshests critics as well. That's because I care about it... a lot. Fireworks is one of the reasons I was able to build a nice Web design business for myself on the side while working a full time job in the printing industry. It enabled me to work faster and get ideas into concrete form easier than with any other graphic application I've used before or since. So it has long been a key part of my toolset and now that I do this full time, it's becoming even more important to me.

But there is a lot to be happy about in the new CS4 version. It still misses some long requested features but it has finally started moving in the right direction again and actually made a huge leap forward.

If you do not want to download and install beta software and are not interested in reading lenghty new features descriptions, please just take a few minutes to watch this video on Adobe TV that features Alan Musselman (who is an application architect from the Fireworks team) demonstrating some of the key new features and improvements in Fireworks 4.

It's been a very long time since I've been this excited about a new Fireworks release but this one really is a fantastic and worthwhile upgrade. Beyond the UI changes, most of the new features go to workflow efficiency and ease of use which have been Fireworks' main strenghts from the beginning. With this release, it's really starting to shape up like the creative powerhouse application it was always promised to become. I can't wait to see how much further Fireworks will jump with the CS5 version...