This tutorial was derived from Toby's Paint Shop Pro 9 Easy Glass Orb tutorial. It was made using Macromedia Fireworks 8, and shows the steps needed to create a glass orb.

Using the menu next to the color, click "solid", then find gradient in the slide up menu, and click linear. In the color menu box, pick 2 colors. Make the first one black, and the second one #666666. Then find the paint bucket tool under "colors" and drag on the circle from the top to its bottom, so that the top will be black and the bottom will be grey.