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.

Select the ellipse tool again, and make an oval near the top of the big circle. Make the circle a solid fill of #666666. On the edge selection, under the fill color, select feather, and select the feather option, and slide the slider to 30. Then, using either the pen tool or the vector path tool, draw a curved line. Then go to the modify menu > alter path > expand stroke... and select the end caps that are round and a width of 6. Click on the line, and remove the outer edge color, and select a linear gradient. Make a white and #666666 fill. Using the fill tool (the paint bucket) make the white on top, and the grey on the bottom.