RAGE Button Design: Review and Giveaway

Posted by Daniel Greg on 09/20/07 in Featured, Graphics, Web, Development, Utilities

ButtonDesign Logo Some of us, believe it or not, are not that skilled with a copy of Photoshop. Yes I know, I’ll try and hold back the outraged hordes of graphic designers. I am one of those people, and it’s very frustrating. Normally I know what I want the end result to be, but just don’t know how to reach that point.

It was the case recently when I was trying to design a good looking button, for a new website. Thank goodness, RAGE software’s Button Design was there to rescue me. Sort of.

The principle of Button Design is fairly simple: It allows you to create and export web buttons from included templates. When you open it up, you are presented with an intuitive interface:

ButtonDesign Screenshot

From here you can choose a template, adjust the text, font and the position of the text. It does all of this beautifully but unfortunately it is fairly limited by the templates available. For me there are only a few that are really viable for use on a modern website and there is no way to create a template. It seems to me they missed a trick here, as you could have a method where designers could create templates for you to download.

The app itself it simple, and it does its job brilliantly well: creating buttons is very quick and easy and you have loads of control over your buttons. So its hard to fault in that respect. But at the end of the day, the app is only as good as the buttons it creates and this is controlled by the quality of the templates.

So if you see a template you like, then odds are you are going to produce a button that really does your site justice - otherwise your out of luck unless RAGE decides to open up a template creation feature.

RAGE ButtonDesign is shareware with a free trial and is available on their website for $19.95.

Lucky for you guys who find a button they like, we have been given 5 licenses to give away to MacApper readers. To enter all you have to do is comment below and answer the following question:

What is the feature that you would most like to see from Button Design?

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21 Comment(s)

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Anthony said on

September 20th, 2007 at 11:24 am

What is the feature that you would most like to see from Button Design?

The ability to create button templates to expand their base 75+ designs.

Puneet said on

September 20th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

The feature i would like to see added is easy integration of its rollover buttons with rapidweaver (a plugin perhaps). It not easy for everyone to add rollover buttons in rapidweaver using code from RAGE button design. Rapidweaver has a good amount of community support with regard to plugins, and RAGE button design can fit in nicely.
As it stands now it seems RAGE button design does what it is supposed to do pretty well.

John said on

September 20th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

Ability to create your own templates would be cool!

Daniel Greg said on

September 20th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

yeah it really bugged me that there was no way to add more or create your own, it seems to needlessly limit the program.

Pemmax said on

September 20th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

Support for Flash effects.

Catatonic said on

September 20th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

An on-the-fly preview feature, to test one more more button designs in the web browser of your choice.

Catatonic said on

September 20th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

Doh! That should say “…test one or more…”

Trotsky said on

September 20th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

Okay here are my most wanted features:

- Ability to add templates obviously!
- Killer CSS buttons
- A cleaner layout
- Tabs

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Chuck Cheeze said on

September 20th, 2007 at 6:17 pm

I’d like to see the ability to save the button as many types of graphics files (PNG being the default).

Josh said on

September 20th, 2007 at 8:43 pm

I would like to see the ability to save as a Photoshop document with layers. I would also like to see a way to add custom backrounds for the buttons.

Yong Hwee said on

September 20th, 2007 at 8:45 pm

Integration with web design or development tools.

ErichD said on

September 21st, 2007 at 4:18 am

I’d have to say that the ability to edit the existing templates a bit, or th eability to add my own designs (an import feature?) would help a lot….

An easy plug-in to Rapid Weaver or RAGE Design (or even RAGE MapDesign), with live previewing and editing would also help.

A more intuitive creation of CSS features (How about changing the button text or even shape on mouse-over or clicking?) is also almost a MUST for me.

Catatonic said on

September 21st, 2007 at 11:30 am

(Weird, my comment posted yesterday didn’t stick for some reason.) I would like to see an on-the-fly preview feature, allowing us to test button designs in the web browser engine of our choice.

Daniel Greg said on

September 21st, 2007 at 11:31 am

Really?! I can see your comment - number 6.
(and its a really nice idea btw :p)

Catatonic said on

September 21st, 2007 at 11:33 am

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Stupid web proxy cache didn’t display the correct version of this page so I needlessly reposted my comment. Does that raise my Lameness points so high that I’m out of the running?

Daniel Greg said on

September 21st, 2007 at 11:41 am

Yes you have now been disqualified
Of course not - we all make mistakes! However, if it was an attempt to influence the decision making by posting twice - we do not fall for attempts like that at MacApper!…. much :p

DMD said on

September 21st, 2007 at 1:07 pm

*Make the buttons automatically resize to fit the text (or does this already have it?).I remember downloading this awhile ago and it didn’t seem to have this feature.

*Include the option to export the button to be used with a form element or just as a link.

*Render the text used in the button as part of the graphic if the font isn’t a common one. I know this is against web 2.0 guidelines but it still should be an option.

Travis said on

September 21st, 2007 at 9:45 pm

The ability to supply a text file with button labels, one per line, and a style, and have it automatically generate appropriately sized button images for all the strings… outputting both the necessary images and/or HTML and CSS for the web.

Oh, and the ability to add additional user-defined templates, of course … just like everyone else here!

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Mark said on

September 23rd, 2007 at 10:23 pm

Tried this little app out and must say I had fun. Creating custom buttons have never been easier. Works with my web design software flawlessly. I high recommend this for someone who does not need to waist time and would like a professional look and feel on their website.

Daniel Greg said on

September 26th, 2007 at 6:09 am

Hi guys,
Youve had a week entries are now closed!
Expect to see a post with the winners soon.

Design Guru said on

December 10th, 2007 at 8:45 am

I agree with catatonic, the main feature must be an ability to test button designs in web browsers of our own choice.

31df6f2e0a0b said on

May 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

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