Odd-shaped buttons . . .

[Peter Brigham MD]

On Feb 4, 2009, Richmond Mathewson <geradamas at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Possibly this message should be subtitled "Richmond Eats Crow."
>
> Alternatively, I might be pointing out something that should have
> been pointed out a long time ago . . .
>
> Just put a stack together:
>
> "ODD BUTTONS.rev" - revOnline under 'Richmond'
>
> that shows that when either PNG or GIF images with areas of  
> transparency
> are used, the transparent portion of them do not respond to mouse- 
> clicks
> (and, presumably mouseEnter, mouseLeave, and so forth).
>
> That shows that it is perfectly possible to make the sort
> of maps I described in my earlier posting; as well as provide maps
> with multiple "hot spots" that aren't contiguous.

I like what you're doing here. I tried to expand the repertoire of  
ButtonBasher to include making standard and default button images,  
which is what I mostly use in my stacks. (I tried to send the revised  
stack to you, Richard, but you couldn't open it.) Unfortunately I  
don't get enough about PNG and alpha channels to be able to export the  
result as a PNG with transparent areas outside the curved ends of the  
buttons, so my kludge-y workaround was to have the user match the  
background color of the context the button will be placed in and  
export a rectangular jpeg image. However, this doesn't work for  
patterned or textured backgrounds (which I also use in many of my  
stacks).

Any hope of your extending the stack to allow standard and default  
buttons with PNG image export? Or can someone else chime in here? I  
would love this feature, and I would use it much more often than the  
gradients and colors (which, don't get me wrong, are quite lovely)!

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com