The Liabrary Panel

Any good website has a continuity in its appearance. There are elements with-in each page that, combined, give the whole website a unique identity. These elements may be something as simple as a font or horizontal rule or as complex as a highly detailed graphic design element or a Flash movie. 

Whatever these elements may be they each have to be inserted into the document by the designer.  The insertion of an element is a physical act that reflects a certain number of keystrokes, mouse clicks, or typed words. The less of these actions that have to take place the more time the designer saves. This is especially important when we consider that fact that many of these items may be used many times over throughout a website.

One easy way to cut down on the amount of time that it takes to repeatedly insert similar elements into a website is through the use of Firework’s Library Panel. A broad range of content can be stored in the Library and simply dragged and dropped into a document when needed. You can make Symbols out of imported photographs, bitmapped illustrations created in programs other than Fireworks, Vector Objects, or bitmap content. Library items can also be easily edited and modified with the changes reflected in every Instance throughout the website.

Library content is divided into two separate categories, graphics and buttons. We will be exploring the creation or buttons in a later unit so, for the time being, we will concentrate on symbols. 

We can add content to the library in a number of different ways. One of the easiest is to {Right-Click} on an already existing item in our Document Window and select "Convert to Symbol" from the context sensitive menu that appears. Draw a circle in your Document Window using your Ellipse Tool and select as described above.

The "Symbol Properties" dialog box will appear prompting us to input a name into a field and select whether we want the item to be a Graphic or a Button.

{Click} OK and the circle is added to the Symbol list in the Library Panel. 

Alternately, we could create a Symbol from scratch by selecting "New Symbol" from the Library Panel Pop Out Menu or Insert/New Symbol from the Menu Bar. The Symbol Properties box appears, just as it does when we convert a graphic into a Symbol, and prompts us to input a name and determine whether we want to create a graphic or a button. When you {Click} "OK" a Symbol Editing Window appears on your screen. This Window is very similar to your Document Window except for the fact that it has a black crosshair at it’s center and doesn’t have any Optimization Preview Tabs across it’s top. You can create content in this Window the same way that you would in a Document Window.  When you are satisfied with what you have created and are ready to make it a Library Symbol you simply close the Window. The Symbol will appear in the list in your Library Panel, ready to be used in your documents.