Portfolio

"Discovering the Fireworks RPC server – Part 1: XML and socket communication" Nov 2006

Alan Mussleman at Adobe asked me if I would write an article about a lightly documented feature of the web graphics program Fireworks. This was challenging because there was so little information about the RPC Server and almost no code samples. The sample in the manual was even wrong!

Once I started exploring, the article became a two part series, with the first installment explaining the basics of the Fireworks RPC Server and how you can use it access Fireworks functions through a socket connection.

"Discovering the Fireworks RPC server – Part 2: Debugging techniques and web applications" Nov 2006

The second article includes a RPC server debugger panel I wrote for Fireworks that is created with JavaScript, Actionscript 2.0 and Flash.

It also includes an ASP.NET code example that allows a user to upload and watermark an image from the web. Behind the scenes, call are made to Fireworks that add the watermark to the uploaded image, save the new version, and load the finished sample back to the web browser for display.