DW UltraDev 4.0 + Fireworks

Well, based on the recommendations from this group, I purchased DW UltraDev 
4.0 with Fireworks.  It arrived late yesterday.

The bad news is:  They don't export .php files well. And they don't 
pre-process PHP either.  And, the Fireworks help files blow Netscape away 
and locked my PC.  Made the learning curve very steep.  I'll bet it says 
this somewhere in the manual.  I had to change my default browser to 
IE.  And, I kept running out of memory when I tried to call DW from 
Fireworks or vice versa (and I do have a fair amount of memory).

The good news is:  Look what I did:
http://armadillosoft.com/index.php3.  This took like 10 hours of work, 
mostly learning time.  But, that's mostly because I am graphically- and 
GUI-impaired so this user-friendly stuff is hard for me to learn.  And, 
because each time I make a change in Fireworks, I have to export to .htm 
and then re-gen into php.  Mostly, I've decided to plunk tables down in 
php.  As long as I keep column-count straight, that works pretty well.

The coolest things:

* Well, the graphics optimizing in Fireworks is really fun and, actually, 
incredibly easy to use.

* The themed buttons in Fireworks.  However, it literally took me 5 hours 
-- not solid, but that's how long it took for my light bulb to turn on -- 
to figure out how to change the text colors in the themes, and yes I did 
use the help system, but didn't find the answers.  I imported one theme 
that I had found in Firewire 3 that I could not find in 4.0.

* In fact, once I figured it out, I found that editing buttons is way 
easier in Fireworks than it is in Flash.  That Copy From Up is the 
key.  Coming from me, this is a huge recommendation.

So, my vote:  Buy Fireworks.

Well, thanks all for your advice.

BTW:  I'm not quite finished with my home page, so all feedback is welcome 
at this time.  (Off-list much preferred; I'm on digest.)

--Emily
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On the web at www.armadillosoft.com *** Armadillo Associates, Inc.
~             Project management, developer relations and
extremely-technical technical documentation that developers find useful.~

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