This tutorial illustrates how you can use Macromedia FreeHand MX to create preliminary sketches of your site's navigation scheme. The site navigation scheme is a map that shows how your web pages relate to one another. Specifically, it shows how users will travel through your site as they click links and interact with application interfaces. A site's navigation scheme is normally reflected in the navigation bars that are used on web pages.

What do 'fantastic,' 'fabulous,' and 'fun' have in common? All three of these words describe the creative work you can do with Flash, Fireworks, and FreeHand. The Macromedia MX2004 Studio 'Fab Three' together give you the tools to create art and animations for the web and other media. Combine these with Dreamweaver and you have a dynamic set of tools.

Sometimes you just need to have a little sparkle on your pages. If we're talking about Web pages, then those sparkles better shine and twinkle! You can use FreeHand MX to create the right amount of 'bling' in a few simple steps.

ColdFusion Developer's Journal editor-in-chief Simon Horwith writes: 'It's finally here! ColdFusion MX 7 was released about an hour prior to this writing. This release is the most customer driven release of ColdFusion to date.'

These days it's a slippery slope we wander between graphics for onscreen viewing and graphics designed for printing. Depending on your own background, you may be more prepared for one application than the other. Working with FreeHand and Fireworks can be slightly daunting, but immensely rewarding.

They just don't make posters as they used to. There was a time when posters were designed to use as few colors as possible to keep costs down. Screen printing techniques allowed for an economical print run, and artists learned to see and draw people and places in terms of basic shapes and masses of color.

There are dozens and dozens of time - saving things you can do in freehand. Following is just a brief selection.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but there's always some loudmouth who wants to add a thousand words to your picture. For that, you have to know a little more about FreeHand's text-handling methods.

The antitrust authorities have failed to prove their case requesting that the US District Court should block - on antitrust grounds - Oracle's proposed $7.7 billion hostile takeover bid of PeopleSoft. Shares of both companies rose yesterday, PeopleSoft's climbing about 15 percent to $20.41 in after hours trading, just below Oracle's takeover offer of $21 per share.

Type, text, copy, words, and (ugh!) even print - whatever you call it, it's the art and science of typography. FreeHand has an extremely robust text-handling feature set. It's easy to learn, and quite flexible and tough enough for anything from business cards to Web pages to small newsletters.

In the last issue of MXDJ (Vol. 2, issue 7), we discussed the Extrusion tool. This time we'll explore other drawing methods. Some modeling effects can be handled quickly in FreeHand with the Extrude tool, but gradient fills and creative blends from one shape to anothere are sometimes the best bet. The Extrude tool does a super job with text, but it has severe restrictions when it comes to compound shapes, such as the lumps and facets on ketchup or Coca-Cola bottles as they become round for the label. The project can be done, but you must stack several different extrusions into one final drawing, which can be taxing on your patience.

The tools you use to create three-dimensional effects on FreeHand objects make a big difference in the final appearance and the time involved. There's not an absolutely right or wrong way to mold a form, but there are definitely many ways. In this first part of a two-part series, you'll learn about the new Extrude tool in FreeHand MX.

Many casual users of FreeHand MX ask how to turn a bitmap or photograph into vector art. Naturally, the hope is that there¹s a button to click and the job is done. There's not, but it's close. Each image will be different in terms of both its content and the look you have in mind for the final artwork.

The Object panel is the key to virtually everything you can do in FreeHand MX. Most of us don't take the time to understand the Object panel, however, and it becomes a source of frustration.

Approximately 10 years ago a new word started to appear in programming circles: objects. The theory was that little bits of code, doing a specialized job, could be prewritten and plugged into existing code as needed.

You have children who want to play with your programs. Or, you're a jigsaw puzzle aficionado and want to share your own work. With Fireworks, you can create a puzzle with as little as two shapes, using them to 'cut' the rest of the pieces.

If you've only used FreeHand MX for Web-based applications, then it's time you learned about the broader world of print. FreeHand was originally designed to give artists a way to put drawings onto paper via the computer. Even though the program's scope has grown far beyond early expectations, you can still achieve superior printing results.

If your work involves company logos, a photo, or other graphic element that you use often, symbols can save you a lot of time. If you're in the beginning stages of creating a Web site or multipage document with recurring objects, a library of symbols can make layout changes quick and easy. Learning how to work with the library can mean hours of saved time.

Freehand MX has to be one of the most powerful programs you can have in your arsenal of graphic tools. By purchasing Studio MX, Illustrator users are now finding out that Freehand is capable of many things that they couldn't do in Illustrator.

Macromedia Studio MX includes a number of relatively unheralded gems. Perhaps it's because Macromedia hasn't hyped these features enough, or maybe users spend so much time focusing on a particular tool that they have simply overlooked or ignored how the other pieces of Studio MX actually work with each other. A great example of this is the stepchild of Studio MX: FreeHand MX.