Joyce Evans: Educator and Author

Here at DMXzone we are working hard to get articles from some of the best authors around, and are pleased to say that we'll be getting some brand new material from renowned educator and author Joyce Evans in the very near future. 

Joyce has been training, educating and authoring as well as web designing for the last 10 years. She's spoken at conferences such as Macromedia MAX2003 and TODCON, and has authored numerous books including Macromedia Studio MX bible, Dreamweaver MX Complete Course and Web Design Complete Course. We've got details about her latest publication – Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 Zero to Hero here. 

At Joyce's personal web site you can see how passionate she is about supporting Web developers - check out the tutorials and reviews of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and other Web design related books and products. 

To provide some background for our readers, we've got an interview with Joyce so you can see how she went from HTML Zero to Dreamweaver and Fireworks Heroine!

DMX: How did you make the link from whatever you were doing previously to getting heavily into Macromedia - lucky evolution or focused aim?

JE: I started using Dreamweaver version 1 and loved it. I also tried GoLive, in fact I decided to tech edit a GoLive book and get on the beta to give it a fair shot. I just couldn't make myself like it after using Dreamweaver.

But I was still an avid Photoshop user. I wrote a review on one of Roger Parkers books and he asked me if I ever considered writing. I said no, so he sent me his agent's name. I was asked if I could do Fireworks. I figured if I was good in Photoshop and PhotoPaint, I could figure out Fireworks pretty easily, so I installed it, wrote a tutorial and had my first book two days later. I'm a very fast learner.

But the next 90 days (you read that right, 90 days to write a book!) was the most stressful time of my life. I had to not only learn how to write for a publisher but get into the nitty gritty workings of Fireworks. I was able to learn Fireworks very quickly but you see, I wanted Fireworks to be Photoshop!

My love for Fireworks started after having an opportunity to meet Sandee Cohen at a TODCON conference. We were both presenting on Fireworks. She got through to me that Fireworks is NOT Photoshop. When I finally saw the power of Fireworks for the Web (vector capabilities) I became a Fireworks convert!

Over the next few years I rarely touched Photoshop for Web work, it's the best for print but I honestly believe Fireworks is the very best graphic editor for the Web. And the integration between it and Dreamweaver and Flash, is a marriage made in heaven.

The only program I rarely use in the Studio MX package is FreeHand. I am not an artist, when I need illustration work beyond simple web graphics I hire it out :-) I know what I'm not good at!

In the past year I've spent my study time digging deeper into CSS and ColdFusion. I am also active in several forums and maintain relations with my peers to stay on top of changing technologies.

 

DMX: Wow – impressive stuff! By the way, I see now you're so into Macromedia stuff, you're a Team Macromedia Volunteer. What does that entail, and how does it work?

JE: Team Macromedia volunteers are just that – volunteers.

People sometimes mistakenly believe we are Macromedia employees; we are not. We give freely of our time to help out users of the product we support. I am currently a Fireworks TMM. I frequent the forum and answer questions when I can get a word in. LOL There is a great support group for Fireworks. Many days I check and the questions have all been answered already.

 

DMX: Was it a product of being active in the Web community or were you contacted?

JE: I applied. I'll be totally honest with you (the only way I am :-) I wanted exposure for my first book in the beginning. But I found along the way that the new users actually helped me! It turned out being an excellent way for me to see where they were having problems with Fireworks. Which techniques they most wanted to learn.

I kept notes about the most asked questions and made sure I included that information in my books. For questions asked over and over again, I made free tutorials and added them to my website. I started making movie tutorials to demonstrate difficult to write about techniques such as using the Pen tool.

Now I most often use movies for a tutorial because I can get a tutorial up faster. It's difficult to maintain a tutorial section and still run my business. But when readers write me asking for help, it motivates me to get up a new tutorial. It also saves me the time of answering the same question multiple times.