[ANN] New altButton DropTools control

[Chipp Walters]

Hey folks,

Been awhile since I've added anything of use to the community, besides a
Steve Jobs bashing now and again ;-)
I've been playing around with Ken Ray's amazing new DropTools Architecture
( http://droptools.sonsothunder.com/index.irev ) and created a fairly slick
little button object called altButton control.

It actually does some pretty interesting things including automatically
adding different types of highlights and gradients using a somewhat fancy
altButton Inspector and basic gradient and effects along with some
algorithms. Here are a few altButtons created by the altButton Inspector. As
you would expect, they all have automatic normal, hover, down and disabled
states. You can adjust the radius as well as the type of gradient with a
single click-- so there's no trying to find 'just the right' gradient or
highlight. You can use them on Macs, PC's and even iOS.

[image: altButtonsGallery.png]

And here's a picture of the altButton Inspector. It's all explained in the
About box as well as below. Currently, it's been tested by a few folks, but
I'm still calling it beta. I'll be using it in a few upcoming projects.
Thanks Ken for the framework!

[image: altButtonsInspector.png]

In order to use it, you must first install DropTools from the DropTools
website. Then place the altButton.rev stack in the DropTools folder and then
relaunch LiveCode. There you will see the altButton control, which you can
drag drop to any stack.

You can access the altButton Inspector by double-clicking the altButton icon
on the DropTools Toolbar. From there you can manage most all of the
properties for the altButton control.

The goal of altButton was to be able to quickly create buttons for use on
Macs, PC's and iOS which all look and work the same. By simply editing the
button color, you can create new buttons easily. You don't have to worry
about choosing gradients or even selecting the disabled button color or
disabled button text.

The altButton control is actually a very simple control consisting of a
single rectangle graphic (the 'button'), a text field (the 'label'), and a
button (the 'icon'). By using a variety of gradients and effects, many
different styles of buttons can be created.

For more details on where to download it from and an explanation of the
inner workings, please visit my blog at:

http://blog.chipp.com/new-altbutton-control-for-livecode/