Texture Panel

Version 2.1 | Download MXP

One of Fireworks’ coolest features is its ability to apply textures to almost anything. What Texture Panel seeks to do is is make that feature easy and more convenient to use.

This version provides a full, thumbnail visual listing of all your textures, giving you the ability to quickly select and apply textures. You can even arrow key through textures to quickly get an idea what texture will best suit your purpose. The ability to assign textures to lists is also available in this version.

I’ve written an article over at Smashing Magazine on how to use every facet of the panel: http://fireworks.smashingmagazine.com/2012/11/14/texture-panel-adobe-fireworks/

Please, please, please, let me know of whatever bugs, feature requests, ideas or notes you have – they’re always helpful!

Did you find this extension useful? Consider donating.

  • LoremIpsum

    Thanks for that!

    • http://coderkid.co.cc/ Matt Curtis

      Of course! :)

  • felic

    While this sure is a very welcome extension i am bit stuck with applying a texture to a object on FW CS6 on Mac. It simply doesn’t. Do i miss something?

    • http://coderkid.co.cc/ Matt Curtis

      Can you explain what happens, maybe screencap a video? Did you follow the Smashing Mag article?

      • http://stas.sh stas

        Same for me except I’m on Windows 7.
        I draw colored rectangle, select it, click on random texture and nothing happens.

        • http://coderkid.co.cc/ Matt Curtis

          @stas As @felic said, you need to ensure your texture opacity is set to greater than 0. By default it is 0, which might be a poor choice, in retrospect. I assumed the average FW user would be familiar/know.

      • felic

        D’oh. It’s simple as that: When i choose a pattern within the standard property panel, the opacity is accordingly set to 50%. Within the extension the default value (0) remains 0. Not sure if it is a bug or intended behaviour.
        Thx anyway for the really useful extension!

      • http://coderkid.co.cc/ Matt Curtis

        @stas As @felic said, you need to ensure your texture opacity is set to greater than 0. By default it is 0, which might be a poor choice, in retrospect. I assumed the average FW user would be familiar with how textures work in that regard.

  • longshotca

    Hi Matt,

    TP looks to be a great tool.

    I’m having a buggy time with the “edit lists” section. When I enter that part of the
    extension the dialog box appears but the contents are greyed out.
    Nothing is selectable and their are no controls to close out of the
    dialog box. Basically I have to hit command-W to get the “edit lists”
    window to close. See attached screen shot.

    I’m running Fireworks 5.1 on an intel imac running system 10.6.8 (no lion for me yet)

    Any ideas?
    Thanks.

    • http://coderkid.co.cc/ Matt Curtis

      I can imagine how that would be confusing, but that’s actually normal behavior – controls are normally that shade of gray, which in retrospect should probably chance.

      Everything’s working at it should, especially if you’ve read the Smashing Magazine article.

      In Mac systems, there is no close button on dialogs in Fireworks. The only way to close the dialog is via the “Save Changes” button.

      Does that clear things up? :)

      • longshotca

        I did read the SM article. It won’t allow me to select anything in the panel. Not thumbnails of the textures, not the scroll bar, or any of the buttons. Basically the whole panel is frozen.

        • http://coderkid.co.cc/ Matt Curtis

          Hmm. That’s worrying. Have you tried redownloading it?

          • longshotca

            Yep. Tried reinstalling it through extension manager as well. No dice on the edit lists panel. Everything else seems to work fine.

          • D.M.

            I’m having this same issue. On FW CS6 with Mountain Lion, all updates applied to ML and CS6.

  • iorbita

    Hi,
    I have the same problem as “longshotca” and other bugs with the assignment of textures in the vector shape tool…
    http://cl.ly/L4EM
    Fireworks CS5 – OS 10.6.8

    • http://coderkid.co.cc/ Matt Curtis

      Thank you – very helpful video! :)

  • Chris Johnson

    Cool stuff! I’m finding it quite useful.

    I’m writing a couple custom JSF scripts, but I can’t seem to access much information about textures embedded in a document. It seems like I can only get the name and opacity, but nothing like dimension. Did you happen to discover any of those properties while developing this plugin?

    Much appreciated.

    • http://matt-curtis.me/ Matt Curtis

      Thanks Chris! It’s always good to hear that.

      When it comes to textures, FW doesn’t provide that kind of information, just the name and opacity. If they do exist, I haven’t found them.

      If you don’t want to use Flash, you could perhaps append the texture to the document, read the element’s width/height, and then delete it. That’s probably only feasible if you’re reading a single texture, not a whole batch of them – that’d probably slow FW’s engine down quite a bit.

      My method was to use Flash to read the in the images/textures and get that information for me.

      - Matt