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The Button Maker Help Contents

The Button Maker Overview

  • About The Button Maker
  • The Button Maker Features
  • System Requirements
  • Technical Support

Quick Start

  • Step 1. Select Button Design
  • Step 2. Specify Button Text
  • Step 3. Select Background, Text colors
  • Step 4. Save your result

The Button Maker Interface

  • Interface Elements Description
    • Save and Text Position Toolbar
    • Button Preview Window
    • Color Panel
    • Text and Button Properties Panel
    • Theme Browser
    • Theme Description Box
    • Theme Preview Window
  • Working with The Button Maker
    • Theme Selection
    • Button Text Editing
    • Text Properties
    • Text Location
    • Button Size
    • Background, Text and Shadow Colors
    • Saving Your Button. Available Formats
    • Theme install/uninstall

Batch Mode

  • Define button texts
  • Specify filenames for your buttons
  • Select image type
  • Select directory where your batch of buttons will be saved

Create a new theme

Command Line Mode

FAQ

The Button Maker Overview

About The Button Maker

The The Button Maker is unique easy-to-use tool, combining power and advanced features with a remarkably intuitive interface. It enables you to create nice-looking 3D and plain buttons, tabs for your web site quickly and effectively. Among its features there are support of additional button themes, various graphic formats (GIF, JPG, PNG) and a batch mode, program could be accessed from command line.

The Button Maker Features

The Button Maker has many useful and some unique features. Among them:

  • Easy-to-use intuitive interface.
  • Themes support. You can add/remove button designs.
  • Three modes of text antialiasing (for very clear text).
  • Flexible button and text customization. (Automatic or manual text position, background, text and shadow colors; shadow offset etc.)
  • Support of three graphic formats (JPG, GIF, PNG) with fine tuning.
  • Batch mode support. Very useful feature for creating big amount of buttons.
  • Low system requirements.
  • Command Line support. Very useful tool when you use it in your scripts.

System Requirements

The Button Maker runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition (aka Windows Me), Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It requires an Intel Pentium or compatible processor, 32 MB of RAM and 4 MB of free disk space.

Technical Support

If you have any comments, questions and problems while using this product, please, contact us at buttons@GifArt.com.

Quick Start

Make an eye-catching, professional-looking button in four easy steps. Let's go!

Step 1. Select Button Design

Pick a button set from the window that shows a list of folders labeled Button Sets. You will see a preview next to the Apply Theme button. Once you find the button you like click the "Apply Theme" button. You will see your button appear and it's now ready for text.

Quick Start

Step 2. Specify Button Text

Uncheck Shadow and Custom Button Size checkboxes. After selecting a new button design you should specify the button text. To do this just type in your text in the Text Input box. Select style and size of the font. Then select mode of antialiasing. Press Center and Center Vertically on toolbar menu to center text.

Quick Start

Step 3. Select Background, Text colors

You can easily change all aspects of the button design, including the background, text and shadow colors. To set Background, Text, or Shadow Colors just click the appropriate button and select your color using the very familiar color palette interface.

Quick Start

Step 4. Save your result

After you have finished creating your button you can save it in one of the three available formats: JPG, GIF or PNG.

Saving JPEGs
To save in JPEG format just click JPG icon on the "Save and Text Position" toolbar. Then set JPG quality and press OK.

Saving GIFs
To save in GIF format just click GIF icon on the "Save and Text Position" toolbar. A GIF options box will popup after you select the folder you want to save your button in. This GIF option is how you can make your button transparent.

Check the Transparent Background box to make your button transparent. The current background color will be the transparent color. OK.

Quick Start

Congratulations! Your button is complete!

As you can see, this is a very fast and easy way to create web buttons! If you have any questions about the The Button Maker interface and advanced button creation, please, see the following chapters: The Button Maker Interface and Working with The Button Maker.

The Button Maker Interface

Interface Elements Description

Interface Elements

1. Save and Text Position Toolbar

Designed for quick and convenient saving and text location. With the help of the alignment buttons you can easily locate your text in X and Y directions.

2. Button Preview Window

The final look of your button is displayed in the Button Preview Window. You can move your button text in this window by using the mouse.

3. Color Panel

Color Panel enables you to change color of your background, text and shadow.

4. Text and Button Properties Panel

With the help of this panel you can customize text, shadow offset and button size.

5. Theme Browser

Use it for quick theme selection.

6. Theme Description Box

Information about the highlighted theme is displayed in this box.

7. Theme Preview Window

Preview the highlighted theme here.

Working with The Button Maker

Theme Selection

To create a button, select a button design from the Theme Library using the Theme Browser. Simply highlight a theme in the Theme Browser and click Apply Theme button. Note, that you can preview any of the available themes before selecting one. The highlighted theme is previewed in the Theme Preview window, and the information about it is displayed in the Theme Description box.

Button Text Editing

To specify your button text enter text in the text box located on the Text and Button Properties panel.

Text Properties

The Button Maker enables you to edit text properties such as size, font, style and shadow.

You can enable/disable text shadow and change its offset (you also can change shadow and text color using Color Panel), edit properties of antialiasing function and change text font and size easily.

Text Location

There are four ways of locating your text on the button:

  1. Simple locating. With the help of the alignment buttons located on the Save and Text Position Toolbar you can easily align your text along both the X and Y axis.
  2. Advanced locating. Arrange text using the coordinate system (X and Y axis). Point of origin is the left upper corner of the button canvas.
  3. Mouse locating. You can drag your button text in the Button Preview Window using the mouse.
  4. Keyboard locating. Click on X or Y textbox and move your text using UP and DOWN keys on your keyboard.

Button Size

By default (when custom button size is not enabled), buttons have a variable size that depends on the amount of the text. If you are not satisfied with the size of a button, click on Custom Button Size and input the precise length of the button.

Background, Text and Shadow Colors

While creating a button it is possible to choose colors of background (canvas on which button is situated), button text, and shadow using Color Panel.

Saving Your Button. Available Formats

The Button Maker allows you to save your button in three different formats. Also, our program has some unique format settings. To save your work just click the appropriate button (GIF, JPG or PNG) on the Save And Text Position toolbar.

GIF format (CTRL-G). This format combines high quality and small file size. It also gives you an opportunity to make the background (button canvas) completely transparent. To turn on this feature, just click GIF Save Button and then check "Transparent Background". Note: The color of transparent background is the same as current Background Color.

JPG format (CTRL-J). Widely used in the web. The Button Maker offers allows you to set JPG compression. Higher quality = bigger file, lower quality = smaller file.

PNG format (CTRL-P). PNG is an extensible file format for portable, well-compressed storage of raster images.

Theme install/uninstall

If you want to install a theme, just open the Themes menu and select Install function (or press Ctrl+I), then open a ZIP file with your theme.

To uninstall a theme, highlight it in the Theme Browser window and select Uninstall in Themes menu( or press Ctrl+U).

To refresh the themes list in the Themes Browser window, press F5 or select Refresh function in Themes menu.

Batch Mode

The Button Maker has a very convenient function called Batch Mode, designed for creating large amounts of web buttons. Batch Mode allows you to create a lot of buttons with different texts using one theme with the same font, color, shadow and size properties.

Note: Batch Mode uses all current button settings (text properties, shadow, colors etc.) from normal mode.

To start Batch Mode select Batch Mode in the File menu or press CTRL+B

Batch Mode

Define button texts

Specify your button text in columns in the "Button Texts" field. Each button text should be written on the new line.

Important: If you have chosen fixed button size (Custom Button Size checkbox in mane menu) Center Button Text checkbox is changeable, if button width depends on text length (Custom Button Size checkbox is unchecked) Center Button Text checkbox is inactive and text will always be centered. Y co-ordinate is taken automatically from main window.

Specify filenames for your buttons

Batch mode creates a batch of buttons using this filename construction: 

"<prefix><record number><postfix>"

Record number is added automatically and prefix and postfix can be defined manually.

Note: You can leave prefix and postfix fields empty. In that case filenames will consist just of record numbers. E.g. "1", "2", "3" etc.

Select image type

Select graphic format for your buttons.

Select directory where your batch of buttons will be saved

Select directory where your batch of buttons will be saved using "Select Directory" button. And press OK button.

Note: desc.txt file with description of your batch of buttons (filenames, length and width of buttons) is placed to the same directory with all buttons.

Create a new theme

A theme consists of:

  • component picture files;
  • sample picture file;
  • theme description file.

All themes are stored in the parent directory /themes, which is located in the The Button Maker directory.

Each theme should be placed in its own folder in the parent directory. All folders and files in /themes directory are visible in the Theme Browser window. The following files can be stored in a theme's folder:

description.txt - theme description, which is displayed in the Theme Description window
left.png - left component picture file
center.png - center component picture file
right.png - right component picture file
fixed.png - this file is used for fixed size buttons
sample.png - sample picture file

PNG files can have alpha-channels. Parts with alpha-channels are filled with the color, set in Background Color. If there is no alpha-channel, background color is unchangeable

The Button Maker scans all files and folders in /themes directory and builds the tree in the Themes Browser window at start. If there are no component files in a folder a theme is inapplicable, but its description is displayed in the Themes Description window (if description.txt file exists). If there is no fixed.png file but all component files are present, the button size will be changeable. If fixed.png file exists the button size will be fixed in spite of component file’s presence.

A theme is packed for distribution. The theme folder is packed in a ZIP file with all directory names saved. Such themes can be installed using Theme/Install menu.

Command Line Mode

The Button Maker supports command line mode, which allows you to use The Button Maker in your scripts without GUI.

To start The Button Maker properly in Command Line mode it is necessary to use /nogui key.

Command Line keys

/nogui -- always should be used when starting The Button Maker in command line mode

/theme:"path" -- path to the directory where Themes are located. (You should specify full path to the directory.)

/width:[auto|800] -- specifies width. auto -- the width of the button depends on text's length. Or you can specify the fixed width manually (in pixels).

/bgcolor:#00ff00 -- sets background color, #rrggbb

/text:"#000000" -- sets text color, #rrggbb

/shadow:#000000 -- sets shadow color, #rrggbb

/shadowoffset:1 -- sets shadow offset. ("0" means none)

/textoffsetx:20 -- sets horizontal text position. Point of origin is the left upper corner of the button canvas.

/textoffsety:20 -- sets vertical text position. Point of origin is the left upper corner of the button canvas.

/gif -- saving into GIF
/transparent -- to save GIF with transparent background

/png -- saving into PNG

/jpeg -- saving into JPEG
/quality:number -- JPEG quiality from 0 till 100

/output:out.gif -- filename where your button will be stored.

/font:Arial -- text font

/fontsize:24 -- font size

/fontstyle:[regular|bold|italic|bolditalic] --font style

/antialiasing:[speed|quality|no] -- sets text antialiasing

Example

exe_Button_Maker.exe "Button Text" /theme:"path" /width:[auto|800] 
/bgcolor:#00ff00 /text:"#000000" /shadow:#000000 /shadowoffset:1 
/textoffsetx:20 /textoffsety:20 /gif /output:out.gif 
/antialiasing:[speed|quality|no] /fontsize:24 /font:Arial 
/fontstyle:[regular|bold|italic|bolditalic] /nogui

FAQ

Q: What does The Button Maker allow me to do?
A: The Button Maker is designed for easy creation of eye-catching web-buttons.

Q: What makes The Button Maker better than other tools?
A: The Button Maker’s Batch Mode, Command Line support and intuitive interface set it apart from less-powerful, hard-to-use tools.

Q: How can I quickly create a button?
A: It's easy as one-two-three, see Quick Start .

Q: What graphic formats does The Button Maker support?
A: The Button Maker supports JPG, GIF and PNG graphic formats.

Q: How do I change my text properties?
A: To change your text properties use Text and Button Properties Panel.

Q: How can I install an additional theme?
A: Open the Themes menu and select Install function (or press Ctrl+I), then open a ZIP file with your theme—that's all there is to it! Your theme will be located in the Themes Browser window. Note: To refresh the themes list in the Themes Browser window press F5 or select Refresh function in Themes menu.

Q: What does Batch Mode do?
A: Batch Mode helps you to create a group of similar buttons.

Q: Can I use The Button Maker in my scripts?
A: The Button Maker supports command line mode, so you can definitely use it in your scripts.

Q: How can I add a button to my web page?
A: The buttons created with The Button Maker are image files (.gif, .jpeg or .png). If you are using a program like MS FrontPage to create your website, you can just add the image to your web page by using the Insert Picture command.

If you are coding your website with straight HTML, you would use the IMG tag to add the button.

An example of linking an image on YOUR website to point to ANOTHER website looks like this: 

<A HREF="http://www.someothersite.com"><IMG SRC="images/button.gif" border=0></a>

The HREF tag points to the location that you want to refer the button. The IMG SRC points to the file on your website. You don't need to refer to your website on the IMG SRC.