masking help for fireworks MX...

first of all, I was wondering if there are any fireworks MX users here, that’s the program I use and I've been having some problems with it...I'm going to put my question behind a cut, just because its long and I don’t know if anyone here uses fireworks, so here goes...

so I was trying to use a bitmap mask, I've used them a million times, but lately they haven’t been working...I normally use the gradient tool to make one or more sides of an image transparent [I hope I'm not being too confusing here] but lately when I try to do that, I cant...well, I can, but what happens is it will either only let me mask out 1 side of the image and not 2 or more or, and this is the really odd part, this will happen...[look at the bitmap picture on the right to see what I mean, I really cant explain it]...

[if I click on the middle of the image with the gradient tool, this happens...part of the image gets masked out with a thick line or sometimes other random parts will be masked and other sides with be unmasked, its really confusing I know]...

This is what happens when I try to mask 2 sides of an image...

[The edges get really hard and the side that is masked 2nd takes away some of the transparency of the first]...

as I've said before, I've used this program for years and I’ve made literally 1000's of icons and I've never had this problem before so I don’t know what’s wrong and I was hoping that if there are any fireworks users here, that maybe one of you could help me...this could just be my program, but maybe its something I did wrong, I'm not sure...thanks...