The Commands panel was the first Flash panel I created for Fireworks, over eight years ago. The original panel has always worked fine on Windows, but with the last couple releases of Fireworks, it's been causing problems on OS X. This new version is a complete rewrite, built from the groupnd up using Flex 3, and should work on both Windows and Mac.

This panel provides quick access to your favorite Fireworks commands, panels, symbols, and auto shapes. While keyboard shortcuts are useful, you may not want to create a shortcut for every command you use frequently, and the Common Library and Shapes panels don't provide any shortcuts at all. With the Commands panel, you can create a set of toolbar buttons for your frequently used commands and assets so that they're always right at hand.

The panel has two tabs, Favorites (labeled with a star) and All Commands (labeled with "All"). Both tabs contain an alphabetical list of commands, panels, symbols and auto shapes. Click an item in the list to launch the corresponding command.

Managing the Favorites list

The Favorites list starts out empty. To add an item to this list, switch to the All Commands tab, which contains an alphabetical list of all the installed command scripts, panels, symbols, auto shapes, and some built-in menu commands. (The list of items on this tab is the same as that shown in my QuickFire extension.) Click the star icon next to an item to add it to the Favorites list. The star will turn dark grey, indicating that the item is now listed on the Favorites tab.

To remove an item from the Favorites list, simply click the star icon again, turning it white. From the Favorites tab itself, you can also ctrl-click an item to remove it, without having to find it on the All Commands tab. To clear the entire favorites list, click the gear button in the upper-right corner and select Clear Favorites List.

Refreshing the All Commands list

The list of commands on the All Commands tab is remembered between invocations of the Commands panel. If you've added a command or symbol since the last time you opened the panel, click the gear button in the upper-right corner and select Refresh Commands List from the menu. The panel will re-scan your Fireworks folders and update the list of commands, panels, symbols and auto shapes. The panel will also automatically update the list every couple of weeks.

Pressing a letter key will scroll the All Commands list to items beginning with that letter. Pressing the Page Up/Down keys will scroll the list up/down. You can launch a command or insert a symbol directly from the All Commands list by clicking its name, rather than its star icon.

Symbols

Note that are a couple of limitations in the Fireworks API that affect how the Commands panel inserts symbols. The first is that once you've added a symbol to a document, you can't add a symbol with the same name from a different folder. Doing so will just insert another instance of the first symbol instead.

The second limitation is that adding a new rich symbol to a document doesn't maintain the symbol's "richness". In other words, if you add a CheckBox rich symbol, nothing will show up in the Symbol Properties panel when you select the symbol. The only workaround for this is to first manually drag a rich symbol from the Common Library panel into your document, then use the Commands panel to insert new instances of that symbol. These new instances will work correctly with the Symbol Properties panel. If there are existing instances of that symbol that you had inserted with the Commands panel, select "Replace existing items" in the dialog that appears when you drag the symbol from the Common Library panel.

Release history:

2.0.0

Complete rewrite in Flex 3 that works on both Windows and Mac. Now supports inserting symbols and auto shapes, as well as some built-in menu commands.

1.2.1

Initial release written in Flash MX. 2002-07-14.