Panels help you edit aspects of a selected object or elements of the document. Panels let you work on frames, layers, symbols, and more. Each panel is draggable, so you can group panels together in custom arrangements.

Some panels are not displayed by default, but you can display them if you want. Some panels are not grouped with other panels by default, but you can group them if you want. When you group panels together, all panel group names appear in the panel group title bar. You can, however, assign any name you like to panel groups.

The Optimize panel lets you manage the settings that control a file's size and file type and work with the color palette of the file or slice to be exported.

The Layers panel organizes a document's structure and contain options for creating, deleting, and manipulating layers.

The Frames panel includes options for creating animations.

The History panel lists commands you recently used so that you can quickly undo and redo them. In addition, you can select multiple actions, and then save and reuse them as commands. For more information, see "Using the History panel to undo and repeat multiple actions" in Using Fireworks.

The Shapes panel contains Auto Shapes that are not displayed in the Tools panel.

The Styles panel lets you store and reuse combinations of object characteristics or choose a stock style.

The Library panel contains graphic symbols, button symbols, and animation symbols. You can easily drag instances of these symbols from the Library panel to your document. You can make global changes to all instances by modifying only the symbol.

The URL panel lets you create libraries containing frequently used URLs.

The Color Mixer panel (Window > Color Mixer) lets you create new colors to add to the current document's color palette or to apply to selected objects.

The Swatches panel (Window > Swatches) manages the current document's color palette.

The Info panel (Window > Info) provides information about the dimensions of selected objects and the exact coordinates of the pointer as you move it across the canvas.

The Behaviors panel (Window > Behaviors) manages behaviors, which determine what hotspots and slices do in response to mouse movement.

The Find panel (Window > Find) lets you search for and replace elements such as text, URLs, fonts, and colors in a document or multiple documents.

The Align panel (Window > Align) contains controls for aligning and distributing objects on the canvas.

The Auto Shape Properties panel (Window > Auto Shape Properties) lets you set the properties of Auto Shapes.

The Image Editing panel (Window > Image Editing) assembles the most commonly used tools for photo editing in one place.

The Special Characters panel (Window > Special Character) lets you insert special characters into your text directly from within Fireworks, rather than having to copy and paste the characters from another source.