The web slices you create depend on the subtlety of your graphic design and how the final blocks in your HTML layout will interact. Therefore selecting web slices is an art in its own right and that task is better left to the person in charge of creating the HTML template.

You will now learn about the rectangular slice tool  in your Adobe Fireworks (CS3, CS4). You will later have the opportunity to compare it to the Photoshop slice tool in another upcoming post.

The screen capture above reveal the  slice tools located in the “Web” category of your Fireworks’ tools panel. With your slice tool “in hand“, you can just select the area of the canvas you would like to convert into a web slice with a simple click-drag-and-release.

A web slice can be easily spotted in the canvas by its green overlay. Once a new slice is created, you can see its properties – dimensions and position – as shown by the screen capture of the “Properties” panel below.

Fireworks automatically name each new slice created. However you are better off renaming your web slice (e.g. top_chair) to something that will make more sense during the HTML design stage.
You can also edit the width and height (W, H) of the current slice to modify its dimensions.  The X and Y values define the position of the slice in the canvas. You can changes those coordinates by just typing new values. You can also use your keyboard arrows in to change those values at 1pixel at a time.

The “Type” property let you choose between foreground and background image. A second drop-down list to select the slice file format (GIF, JPEG or PNG) and its compression. In the screenshot above,  ”JPEG- Better Quality” means a compression ratio of 80% in a JPEG file format.

For for each new slice created  Fireworks adds  a new layer under “Web Layer” folder as shown in the image on the left.

Just like  regular layers in your canvas, you can reorder web layers by just dragging one above or below another. You can also hide a given web slice by just clicking on the “eye icon” in front of its layer. To reveal a hidden slice, just click the empty space reserved for the eye icon of that layer.

The slice name defined in the properties panel is the same as the name of the web layer. By renaming the web layer you are renaming the web slice as well.

You can lock all or just a selected layer by clicking on that layer’s lock box  in the  column right next to the “eye  icon”. A locked layer shows the lock icon and the corresponding layer and web slice  can no longer be modified until it’s unlocked again.

Locking web layer is a safe way to avoid accidentally modifying that slice properties. You can lock all web layers at once by clicking the lock box left of the “Web Layer” folder icon.

Compared to Photoshop or Illustrator web slicing, Fireworks slice tool is more intuitive, easier to use  and packs all the functions you need for slicing and dicing in one spot. In a fast pace web production environment, Fireworks slice tool is a tremendous time saver.

1. Always start with picture dimensions (w, h) greater than your target size
2. Set the image resolution between 72 and 96 pixels/inch
3. Crop the image to only keep the area needed to convey your message
4. Resize the cropped image to reduce the dimensions to the minimum while maintaining the proportion between width and height
5. Choose the appropriate export file format: PNG, JPEG or GIF
6. Select the right compression ratio/color range

To put it in simple terms, you need to find the right balance between the quality and file size.
If you must do some corrections such as removing blemished or creating smoother edges, do it on the original image (before resizing it) .

I have seen websites using a 500kb (kilo bytes) picture they shrunk by just setting the desired with and height in the HTML image tag (<img src=”path-to-image” with=”300″ height=”250″ />).
That trick does not reduce the file size of that image and in most case the picture displayed is less sharp than what it should be. You have not only a degradation in the picture quality but a waste of bandwidth and web hosting storage. No wonder that page took so00 long to download.

To give you an idea, a raw picture resized to of 300 x 250 pixels and well optimized should be in the range 5 to 10 kb depending on how rich in colors that image is.

I have also come across web pages where some picture are “bloated” to dimensions greater than the actual width and height. Of course a few pixels adjusted never hurt and are barely noticeable: it solves a presentation issue and saves you some time.

However a change of an image’s dimension (width or height) from 150 pixels to 200 pixels would catch the eye and obviously degraded the visual appeal of that image.

If you follow the 6 key points listed above, you will get a crisp image with a small file size.

To add a background color that covers the entire web browser’s viewport,  set a background  property to the HTML body tag:
body {
background-color: #333333 ;
}
That create dark grey background color (#333333).
Applying a background color to the body tag  add more contrast between  your web page content and the remainder of the screen particularly with fixed width CSS layouts.  In general, using a CSS background color is the easiest way to “colorize” a given block of content without adding much to your web page download time.

You can also add a background image to your web page body using the CSS style.
body {
background-image: url(images/bgbody.gif) ;
}
The url parameter defines the relative path to the graphic used as a background image.
That file’s path can be absolute (i.e. http://livetrainingsession.com/images/bgbody.gif  or /images/bgbody.gif) or relative to the location the CSS style as show above.
Feel free to copy and paste that absolute path nto your web browser’s address bar to see the actual background image.

In this instance the web page uses a very small graphic made of dark-grey patterns. You can see that tiling bleeding through the left and right edges of this web page if your display width is greater than 980 pixels.

You can  simultaneously apply the background color and the background image to the body tag as well. You would write the CSS style as follow:
body {
background-color: #333333 ;
background-image: url(images/bgbody.gif) ;
}

or use a more compact,  shorthand version:
body {
background: #333333  url(images/bgbody.gif) ;
}

or even more compact:
body {
background: #333  url(images/bgbody.gif) ;
}

In this example, the background color is written in its compact form (#333). An hexadecimal value  made of three pairs of identical values (33) can be replaced by just three values (333), one for each pair. Hence “#999999″ could be replace by “#999″ and the color “#FFFFFF” can be written “#FFF”.

It’s always a good idea to use a background color in conjunction with a background image. The web browser covers the “viewport” with the background color while downloading the background graphic. It’s not only for aesthetic but to avoid the visitor having to stare an empty white screen while the web page is loading.

It’s worth mentioning the background image is always displayed on top of the background color whenever the two are applied to the same HTML element. And it does not matter in which order they are defined.