Chapter 9: Slices, Rollovers, And Hotspots; Creating And Editing Slices - MACROMEDIA FIREWORKS MX 2004-USING FIREWORKS Use Manual

CHAPTER 9
Slices, Rollovers, and Hotspots
Slices are the basic building blocks for creating interactivity in Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004.
Slices are web objects—they exist not as images, but ultimately as HTML code. You can view,
select, and rename them through the Web Layer in the Layers panel. This chapter discusses the
concepts central to slicing and gives procedures for using slices to incorporate interactivity into
your web pages.
Using the drag-and-drop rollover method of attaching interactivity to slices, you can quickly
create rollover and swap-image effects in the workspace. You can view the assigned behaviors in
the Behaviors panel and create more complex interactions using this panel.
You can also incorporate interactivity into your web pages with hotspots. Hotspots are used to
create an image map, which is HTML code that defines a hot region in an HTML document.
These regions do not necessarily link anywhere; they could just trigger a behavior or define
alternate text. Hotspots can also receive mouse events, allowing JavaScript behaviors to be acted
on in slices.

Creating and editing slices

Slicing cuts up a Fireworks document into smaller pieces and exports each piece as a separate file.
Upon export, Fireworks also creates an HTML file containing table code to reassemble the
graphic in a browser.
Slicing cuts a document into multiple pieces, which are exported as separate files.
Slicing an image has at least three major advantages:
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