custom buttons

[Wilhelm Sanke]

Although I am 5 days late in this thread a few remarks:

On Fri, 21 Mar 2003  Chris Sheffield <cm_sheffield at yahoo.com> wrote:


> Why is it that if I use a transparent button with a
> custom image, I can't get the button label to look
> right?  If I enter a label such as "Exit" for my
> button, and select the Show Name property, the label
> displays below the custom graphic, not centered on it.
>  I can adjust the margins so that the label seems to
> be centered on the button, but it displays behind the
> image, not on top of it.  Is there any way to make
> this work.  Seems like strange behavior.
>
> I need the use of custom buttons, but I'd like to be
> able to have a built-in button label.  Otherwise, I
> have to create tons of button images (at least three
> states for each button) with the labels already on
> them, and then import them into my stack.  Is there an
> easier way to do it?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris Sheffield
> Read Naturally
>



Scott Rossi on Fri, 21 Mar 2003  has already pointed out that that the
button name/name beneath the icon is the default behavior.

Like Chris Sheffield I believe that the possibility to have the button
name/label directly "on top" of  an icon would be a useful additional
feature of Metacard/Revolution.

There are a lot of instances - for instance with language exercises -
where you might use customised icons and want to be able to change
button names/labels "on the fly" during runtime.

On way to achieve this would be to use the respective images as
*backpatterns* of the button, but unfortunately this works only if you
have rectangular images. If you use partially transparent
non-rectangular images, the transparent parts of the image will appear
as black - and not as transparent.

So indeed the only solution to use non-rectangular images as button
icons would be with the added feature to be able to place names/labels
directly on top of an icon.

Of course, there are workarounds (like grouping  fields and buttons or
images and graphics),  but the most comfortable way would be this
additional feature.

I had an exchange with Scott Raney of Metacard about these questions
about a year ago, and he had told me that this feature is on the request
list.

Those of you who are interested in such a feature should ask  Scott
Raney to move it more upwards on the to-do list, so it could be
available  in Metacard and Metacard-based Revolution in a less distant
future.

By the way, check out "RealDraw Pro" of  www.mediachance.com as a very
inexpensive but also otherwise powerful tool to create transparent
png-images (sorry only for Windows).

Regards,
Wilhelm Sanke