Hello,
This is an already made decision yet we'd like to definitely hear your opinion about this. As you may know, Freehand uses a mix of vector- and raster effects to be applied to shapes. This is something we'd never really liked and instead, due the current rewriting of the rendering engine, we've decided to have only vector effects on styles and raster effects on layers. The positive effect is that you will end up with a combination of a raster-editing software mixed with a vector-editing software without them disturbing each other or loosing capabilities.
Let us know your thoughts!
Alex