Button design

[cursor]

I can see how the latter sets are improved by the inset bevelling technique. Very nice.

[Soquili]

The color change does not need to be so extreme for the down state but it would depend on the other elements in the page design.


In my original post a few years ago the up button is actually the mouse over state. A more subtle colour was used for the mouse off state.

For the purpose of the up/down states I chose to use the mouse over state for the up position.

[Soquili]

Here is an example of the mouse off and mouse over states similar to the one I posted several years ago.

The colour of the center object in the buttons uses a named colour.

You can drag the color to the Color Editor to change both buttons. See second attached image for an example of a different colour.

[Soquili]

For more ideas about creating buttons, here are some I created a few years ago. You will need to make your own mouse over and mouse down images.

[Spinny]

Nice. The curved gradients are just ellipsoid ones with the centroids up beyond the tops of the buttons? I'm still far from versed in the Xara gradient tool.

[Soquili]

Correct Spinny. An elliptical fill with the center node well above the shape is how the gold and silver back shapes were made.

If you plan to make buttons using that type of fill keep in mind they do not work well as stretchy buttons. Although for static sized buttons they are very good.

To make stretchy buttons that have a similar look, using Xtreme 4 and Pro 4 individual shapes are required to simulate the curved fill.

[dlynnhicks]

Did we get an answer to the drop down functionality. I have been looking but time is a little short. Do we have to manually make our menus with submenu's. I really like my menu maker that does all the work for me. I wonder if we are going to be able to use our other packets of software or should I export this all to dreamweaver to finish up the button work.

[Soquili]

Hi dlynnhicks,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

In Wed Designer you would need to create the drop down menus manually.

If you have Xara MenuMaker or Xara Webstyle you can create your dropdown menus as you normally would in those applications. You can then use a placeholder to use the menu in your Web Designer page(s).

[dlynnhicks]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll start working on that.