Foundation Fireworks CS4

11.9. Packaging and deploying your panel

Throughout this chapter, we've been working with exported SWF files. To add a custom panel to Fireworks, we just copied the SWF to the correct folder, restarted Fireworks, and then accessed the panel from the Window menu. This is fine for development, but when you're finished with your panel and want to share it with the world, you need to package your panel into an MXP file that can be double-clicked and automatically installed using the Adobe Extension Manager.

Creating an MXP is a relatively simple task. You start by authoring an XML--based file saved with the .mxi extension. We've included a starter MXI file in the files that accompany this chapter (StarterMXI.mxi, also available at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe ...