1. create something very basic, or

2. spend countless hours searching the web for Photoshop tutorials on how to create a bubble or depth effect, then spend even-more-countless hours fighting with Photoshop to implement it, and finally, maybe adapt the image with some external tools to make it be a CSS sprite or whatever)

Yes, 1. is not necessary a bad thing (HN is a good example :-)), but we all know that for most softwares, some attractive eye-candies are useful. Even GMail uses more than a simple <input type="button"> to display their buttons.

So here comes Da Button Factory. It aims at making it easier to create pretty buttons, which are one of the key elements of an user interface (especially on the web), in an quick and human-friendly way (not tons of options/menus/concepts like in an image processing program). And because using plain image files on the web often sucks, it (will) provide solutions that makes good use of CSS.

Currently it's just a beta. There is only a very simple CSS solution implemented. It may looks ugly in some browsers. Things are not polished.

But I would be very glad to hear any comments of yours on this "draft". Do you find it interesting? Do you have any critics/ideas about it? Did you notice any bugs or problems?

Oh, and I am french, so please excuse me for any grammar/spelling mistake in this post, and don't hesitate to correct me, of course :-)

The character is simple enough it should be easy to work into any site logo, and the meaning works well with your URL ("Big Button Factory"). Mandarin is also cool.

Let's start with 厉害. Easy to pronounce and sounds like its meaning (at least to me).

Pretty neat site, along with looking up characters by typing or cutting and pasting you can draw them and it tries to guess what character you're looking for.

What prompted you to start with 厉害?

(Its not like single Chinese characters in isolation say "Note to English speakers who read Asian languages: this is Chinese, not Japanese or Korean. Please don't break our pun by trying to read it in one of those other languages. Thanks!")

Edited to add: If you wanted a Japanese name for the site it would probably be ビッグボタンファクトリー, pronounced Biggu Botan Fakutorii. It means... well, OK, guess you can probably figure that out.

1. More Fonts 2. A color picker

One small bit of advice - I'd pick a default welcome button that wasn't quite as jarring as the orange one. Something with a bit more of a muted color scheme that goes with the rest of the blue layout you have going on, like:

http://tr.im/examplebluebutton

Otherwise, very well done.

Nice to know a web designer appreciates it!

It would be great if there was a "randomize" button so that one could quickly try out different styles with the same text.

Two minor nitpicks:

- Hovering over "Da Button Factory" makes the text yellow but isn't clickable

- Your menu buttons at the top could use some adjusting so that the text is more vertically centered (in Mac FF).

Great work!

If you are feeling brave maybe animated buttons which cycle several lines of text.

Not sure about the css version though. Do you really want all these people hitting your server?

I'd like to see some more font options. The stock web fonts tend to look a little stale because we see them in so many places.

It would also make things slightly easier if there was a download button next to the web address--this might be tricky to implement but it would save users several seconds.

Yes, I should definitely add more fonts, it's useful. But does anyone know if embedding open sources fonts is fully legal? And what about commercial fonts, i.e: Arial, Comic sans MS, etc.? It is quite difficult to understand the licences for my usage.

For the download button: yes, I know it would be nice, I thought about it, but decided to delay its implementation, because as you say, it will certainly be tricky to make :-D It will come!

If you stick to free or standard fonts, I think the worst that happens is that you have to take them down, especially since you're not charging for use.

And whatever you do, don't use comic sans (http://bancomicsans.com/home.html).

I suggest to add next two features which can be essential for some scenarios: 1) Add way to choose background color (i.e. page color) for the formats that don't support transparency (gif and jpeg). PNG gradient transparency is not supported in IE6 and quite often there is a need to render button edges with background color preset because of that. 2) Pre-render images for other button states: hoovered and pressed.

And afterthought: consider supporting iPhone-style buttons (i.e. like big red "delete contact" button and small blue buttons), I'm sure a lot of people are looking for them.

I'll look ASAP at browser issues, but unfortunately I've currently no easy access to several OS/browsers :-/

2. Highlight curve should be more like sine wave, It looks really boring when it is like a bottom of ellipse -- a part of a sine curve would be a better approximation of real-world shinies.

There is always a third option: pay somebody to handle this for you. I like automated solutions as much as the next guy, but if you want quality and don't want to become a graphics design professional yourself...

I don't think I'll implement that in the near future, but I keep it in the back of my head for later, and I'll contact you when the time has come :-)

Thanks for the idea.

What I like better there:

* Their button has a really sharp glossy look. Yours are nice, but not as nice (that I noticed, at least).

* They have more fonts than you do.

What I like better about yours:

* Lots more control over most of the details. Notably, the custom color gradients.

* The showcase of editable examples. Very nice.

* Less clutter on the page. Though I certainly would not blame you if you put up ads or a tip-me button.

Although I think your extensive options are good, it's sort of a power-user interface. You might consider a simpler interface for visitors who want something very quick and easy. Or, you could expand your gallery of examples, perhaps even add a sidebar of examples to the front page.

All in all, very well done. Congratulations and thank you.

also, maybe more visual aids for the options - like images to show the result for a particular selection. this might speed up the use of the system.

This means IE6 users get a slightly chunky rounded corner and users with better browsers (IE7, FF, Safari, etc) get a smooth alpha transparency.

My good friend, Nicole Sullivan, has a great presentation on this topic (http://www.slideshare.net/stubbornella/designing-fast-websit...) see slide 55 for PNG optimization.

Nicole also worked on a tool with another friend, Stoyan Stephanof, http://smush.it . Smush.it reduces the filesize of your images without losing quality by removing unnecessary bit data, and I think, metadata. For some of your buttons it was carving 14% off the filesize. It might be worth integrating that in for your users.

@brk: the method is pretty simple: the images are queried via Ajax to the server, which runs a Fast-CGI script, written in Perl, to generate the buttons. Javascript does the rest (visual effects, Ajax, CSS code generation...)

@zepolen: thanks for reporting the problem in Opera, I'll investigate ASAP!

@DXL: yes, color pickers and more powerful controllers in general (for picking the orientation maybe, for example) are in the roadmap :-)

@exalo: you are not the first one to tell me about a "randomize" feature. I'll think of it seriously. Thanks. For the vertical alignment: normally it should be centered, but the result of "vertical-align: middle;" vary between browsers. I'll make it better ASAP :-) For the non-clickable title: actually it's currently just a <h1> tag, but this will obviously change, you're right.

Others have already mentioned a colorwheel. Adding that would help usability. Unless I've been doing colors recently, I don't know #f00 from #0f0.

Even a simple popup-grid of colors, something like what makebutton.com has for color selection would help here.

Minor bugs I came across:

Undo does not work for swapping the two background colors.

If I hammer the 'Size +' (or any other) button, I get rate limited. I didn't look at the code, is there a query for every button press when I go from 200 -> 250 for the width?

The error message for non-integers could be better: Value "11.2" invalid for option text-size (number between 0 and 2000 expected). Actually, the error messages could be better all around, but it isn't a huge deal.

West/East only shadows don't work: Value "nonew" invalid for option shadow-orient (possible values: "n", "s", "e", "w", "ne", "no", "so", "se").

The top-left text for "Da Button Factory" should be an actual link. (Or just clear the button settings back to the default, or it could even be the 'randomize' link that others have asked for.)

- the undo is now ok with the "swap" buttotn

- you can "hammer" the increment/decrement buttons

- the error messages are a bit better ('integer expected' and not 'number expected'). What do you mean by "better all around", what do you think of?

- west/east only shadows are possible

- the title is now a link

Thanks!

Examples:

Buttons that look "native in Facebook" for fb apps

Buttons that looks "right" in a Google Gadget.

Elements for Apple Dashboard widgets.

Was there a reason for "Da" instead of "The"? Programming isn't "gangsta" rap, after all.

I'm a huge fan of Joe Krause's advice to beta test a business model while you beta test your product: How you make your money is equally relevant in how people perceive your product. http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus-confe...

1. Add an easy way to get hover and pushed states for buttons. Basically, provide some clever defaults that allow the user to get all 3 at once with minimal work.

2. Put in a paypal or tip jar link (it can't hurt, right?)

3. Add a pretty attribution link, "Buttons by Da Button Factory" or something.

1. yes, it's in my mind, it will be the big step towards the "version 2"

2. and 3. it may come ;-)

I don't like the standard one, but I'd want users to know it's Paypal. But I don't know if using their logo is be infringement, but you could still use a PayPal-like logo.

I don't like the word "donate", but I'm not sure how that change would effect users actions; that's been the standard for a while. But I like "contribute" and "support".

P.S. I added your site to SU: http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.dabuttonfactory.com/

Curious to know what method you're using to generate the actual buttons?

1. On a first glance the interface is a little overwhelming, and I am not sure where to go/what to change first. Have a single column of options that can be expanded/condensed accordion style (think the Mac MS Word formatting sidebar).

2. Buttons produced are only a single image. It would be nice if multiple images/sprites were created (that is, a single image file, with multiple images). The additional images would enable hover and on click capabilities, providing a user with visual feedback that the image is indeed a button, and that it is working. That being said, you may also need to include the relevant CSS necessary for a user to select the correct sprite in each situation.

3. Having the Undo/Redo on the top right seems a bit unnatural. (I didn't even notice these options at first; moving them to the top left may be better?) You might also consider using the standard arrow icons for these options with a text description on the bottom or on the right

4. Other people have already mentioned this, but additional fonts and a color picker would be very useful.

5. The site's layout requires a fairly wide screen. When I don't have my browser window maximized, the layout gets kinda messed up (input boxes flow to the next line abandoning their label).

First of all, thanks everyone for the big amount of -so- useful comments! It's really interesting and motivating!

Some have noticed, the server has been down, overloaded. I put some rules to guarantee its disponibility, but it may still be problems (it's a very small server and I just made dirty hacks to prevent it to die miserably, I hope).

I pushed a little update which corrects some of the bugs suggested:

* the 'swap' button is now usable with the history

* the vertical and horizontal padding are in the right order :-P

* "hammering" the increment/decrement buttons is now possible

* the shadow orientation now allows only east or west

* the site was totally broken in IE 6/7, now it should be usable (but terribly ugly!)

* the title "Da Button Factory" is now a link

* links have been added to download the button or bookmark the page

For the color pickers: I'm currently working on it. But it's a big job, and I want to make it well, so it will take a little time.

For browsers issues: thanks for the reports, It's very important, and I'll investigate, but not immediately (I've no easy access to the Internet in the week, even less access to Windows).

I'll certainly open a blog soon, so that interested people could follow the updates via RSS.

Once again, a big thanks to everyone for the help!

Thanks a lot for that tip - that's going to come in really handy.

Yes, it's a pain b/c you have to run a VM, but it's the most reliable way of testing IE. Other "shortcuts" won't perfectly emulate IE7 in an IE6 environ, or vice versa.

Otherwise, it's nice and simple.

(and add a color picker)

BTW, Da Button factory now have: color pickers, a few more fonts, a public API, a better handling of the Opera browser (but, sorry, still bad with IE), and a lot of minor improvements :-)

2. It would be cool to be able to replicate popular button styles of other companies, or at least similar to them.

3. I didn't see the undo/redo links until I was done. Maybe move them somewhere else, like under the center button?

4. Def need to make it easier to find colors you want. Plus more fonts like others suggested.

5. Can you automatically have it generate a "button pressed down" version?

The Examples section should be more prominent. I just assumed you could only do glossy web 2.0 buttons at first glance. But your examples are impressive.

I think, in general, you need to a) add a color picker (as everyone else has said), and b) offer a clickable "playlist" of button settings. Take your examples, make them into recipes, and put them on the front page. I want to click the Apple-style button and have the button I'm working on turn into that style.

Make sense?

BTW - do you know that song for kids about the button factory? "Hi, my name is Joe, and I work all day at the button factory. One day, my boss came up to me and said 'Hey Joe, are you busy?' I said 'no.' He said, 'So push this button with your right foot.'" etc.