One of the most useful tools in many desktop graphic applications is the pen tool. The pen tool allows you to draw straight or smooth vector lines, plotting out points on the canvas that are joined by paths. Take a square as a simple example: each corner is a vector point with paths inbetween those points that repesent the straight edges of the square.

The pen tool allows you to draw simple shapes such as the square but with a little practice you’ll be able to draw any complex shape you want as if you were drawing with a pen by hand. Furthermore, as your complex shapes are made up of vector points and paths, you’ll be able to go back and edit your shape at any time and point as well as resize it without losing any quality in the shape.

Our Adobe Fireworks Pen Demonstration

Keep on reading to find our downloadable pen tool tutorial for Adobe Fireworks as well as many hints and tips on how to better use the pen tool.

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Peeling stickers and page curls are a very popular Web 2.0 style that make your images look like their coming off of the screen!

Creating Peeling Stickers and Page Curls

Using Adobe Fireworks we’re going to show you have easy it is to make peeling stickers and this technique can be used in the exact same way for making page curls too! In this tutorial we’ll cover linear fill options, the subselection tool and the slice tool - it’s that easy!

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Sticky forms are so called because the data a user inputs into the form “sticks”. The problem with a standard web form is that the data inputted will only remain on the form until the form page is either refreshed or moved away from. This can lead to frustration for a user who has filled out a form but then decides to visit another page before returning to find they need to fill in every field of the form again.

Click here to view the demo

Sticky forms give the user the freedom of moving around the site, knowing whatever actions they have taken on a form will still be there when they return. Using PHP sessions and cookies we can also store that information for use on forms on other pages or for when they visit the site at a later date.

In this tutorial we’re going to look at making sticky forms that will capture data in a PHP session. We’ll also use AJAX to make each field on our form save the data into a session as soon as that field loses focus.

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