Article
Web Design Tools From Down Under
Trellian Button Factory 2.02 $45
Trellian is a well-known software development company, also based in Australia. Besides the Button Factory, they also market other Web tools, including an FTP client, a search engine submission utility, and an ecommerce platform. TBF is available as a free demo version, and as a fully functional registered version. The demo version times out after 30 days and does not allow you to save any images; in this sense, it is more of a trialware than a full shareware program. As the name says, this program does nothing but create buttons for Websites. It gives you plenty of styles and options to choose from, though as with My Web Toolbox, you're limited to the templates provided (and this program provides a tremendous number). Trellian was also provided with the newsletter version of this review, and their response was simply, "Sounds good!"
Installation
TBF installs quickly, using a standard installation wizard, and can be uninstalled through the Add/Remove applet. Opening TBF gives you a full screen with a Daily Tip (which can be disabled) and two toolbars that feature many of the standard buttons we've grown accustomed to -- New, Open, Cut, Copy, Paste, etc. TBF is not nearly as self-explanatory as My Web Toolbox, and may prove intimidating to the novice Web designer. To my eye, it has some of the look and feel of the big boys, particularly Paint Shop Pro - and those experienced with PSP, Photoshop, or another such program will feel more at home. Virtually no offline help is available: a link to the Online Manual sends you to a Trellian Website that provides a good amount of help. I strongly advise new users to go through this material first, as there's plenty of helpful info and tips here, though not all of the options are satisfactorily explained. The toolbars at the top are somewhat dockable, though they can't be dragged and dropped just anywhere. Additionally, a Properties menu is available by right-clicking, or through the top menu.
What it Does
Most of your work will be done in the main, blank space, called "the work bench." The program is template-driven; all of your work will be based on one template or another. You've got lots of options to change and modify the templates -- size, shape, border, background color, etc. -- from both the toolbar and the Properties menu, which are accessible by right-clicking. The templates themselves are varied and quite beautiful, with some very sophisticated graphic designs available (if I count correctly, this version comes with 125 selections). In addition to the fancier choices, some plainer, more basic templates are provided, including ones that are designed to fit in well with standard Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix graphical schemes.
The easiest way to create a button is to open the Image Library (through Window, Show Library, which displays the entire library's contents in a narrow right-side pane) and drag a selected button style onto the work bench. Once on the work bench, a button template can be modified and resized as desired. A full-color palette makes color choices very extensive and easy to work with. The program lacks a multiple undo, so you can only go back one step in the creation process. You can, however, use the Delete button to get rid of creations that you don't want and start over with a fresh template.
All the images are rectangles or squares, though many of the designs themselves are ovals, circles, arrows, and so on. You'll have to assign a background color that closely matches your Web pages' background color or image in order for the button to blend in, or import the same background image that you use in your Web pages. Note that the background color choice is reflected over the entire work bench, so don't let that throw you.
Like My Web Toolbox, TBF does not support GIFs. It does, however, support BMP, JPG, PNG, and PPM (Portable Pixelmap File) formats, along with the proprietory TBF format (primarily useful for saving works in progress). Since the program does not support GIFs, backgrounds can't usually be transparent (PNG images can be variably transparent, but it isn't a simple matter of clicking a button; see the PNG home site at www.libpng.org/pub/png/ for more information). I imagine Trellian's rationale for not supporting the GIF format is similar to that of MWT's creator. There is a transparency option in Properties, but this doesn't make a color transparent in the accepted sense of the word; instead, it blanks out the entire template, leaving only the text and the background color.
It took me a while to figure out how to alter the text in a template. The instructions provided in the Online Manual are wrong, wrong, wrong -- according to the instructions and the provided image, there's a text box in the Toolbar that you can enter your new text into. Nope. However, what does work is to highlight the image and then double-click on it. Your image "disappears" and a blank, white field appears into which you can type your new text. Clicking outside the text field/image brings the image back, with your new text included. It is quite easy to change and resize your text, and you have a large number of fonts to choose from. As far as I can tell, the New Text option gives you a button with no graphics inside except for the basic background color -- a useful choice for Web designers who know what to do with such an option (and similar to the Transparency option detailed above). TBF does not provide for banner creation per se, but with the Resize option, I see no reason why you can't make a button big enough to serve as a banner image.
TBF gives you a straightforward way to create clickable image maps, as outlined in the Manual. However, from what I can tell, you can only assign a single URL to a particular image -- no slicing an image into chunks and assigning different URLs to each piece.
Saving a creation is a bit tricky; choosing Save As only allows you to save the button as a .TBF file. If you highlight the button and choose File, Export, you can choose from the other four formats. Again, a study of the Online Manual is helpful here. Some of the fancier options, such as choosing grid size, creating new frames, etc., aren't well explained; you'll either have to figure them out on your own or extrapolate their meaning from your knowledge of other graphics programs.
The Wrap-Up
In summation, Trellian's Button Factory is an excellent program that can create sophisticated Web buttons quickly and with minimal effort. The learning curve is steeper than with My Web Toolbox, but the program gives you some functions and options that MWT lacks. I'm not altogether happy with the sometimes counter-intuitive way the program is set up to operate, and I'm disappointed in the Online Manual's lack of documentation on a number of features. However, the program does what it sets out to do very well. The huge variety of button templates and sophisticated array of tools makes the Button Factory a worthwhile purchase for serious Web designers.