Button Builder Review: The Best Builder for Buttons

Designing and creating web pages is not as easy as it used to be.  Standards are getting higher and higher when it comes to the design and layout of web pages.  What if I told you there was a way to take at good amount of time and effort out of your construction process with a small, handy app from Realmac Software?  Introducing Button Builder – a simple application made to create fantastic looking buttons with ease.

Button Builder is designed to make all of your buttons, whether it’s for a web site or an application for the Mac, quickly and easily.  Every aspect of the app is tailored so that you can get in, make your buttons, and get out.  The user interface is simple and streamlined so that you only need to focus on your results.  

At the top is a standard tool bar with 4 buttons.  Theme, Font, Adjust, and export.  Think of the toolbar as a conveyor belt with each step in order to make your button.  First, select one of Button Builder’s 50 themes each varying in size and color.  Next, choose a font out of your library.  It doesn’t matter if the font is specific to your computer or not because the exported button will be an image.  After that, click the Adjust button to customize all of your button’s aspects ranging from the text position to the width of the actual button.  It’s a comfort to know that your button can be as wide or as thin as you’d like.  Each template is made up of three parts: Left, Middle, and Right.  All Button Builder has to do is increase the size of the Middle part. Once you have your button looking the way it should, click the Export toolbar item to save it in either .JPG or .PNG format.

Button Builder is required to run at Mac OS 10.4.3 or higher which means your computer should run this app at a quick pace.  Button Builder takes up very little processing power resulting in almost insinuations responses.  However, depending on what you have running at the moment and on how big your button is, Button Builder’s speeds will vary.

Button Builder does have it’s flaws.  The bottom of the file menu has its usual “Print Setup” and and “Print” menu items, but after choosing “Print”, nothing happens.  Also, when opening a new window in Button Builder, the theme column is missing it’s scroll bar.  To fix this one must simply resize the window, but this does become annoying having to do this every time you open the app or a new window.  

One might compare Button Builder to a more professional program such as Adobe Photoshop.  If you want more control over the look and feel of your buttons, Photoshop is your choice.  Button Builder makes it easier to create a standard set of buttons based on its wide variety of templates.  Speaking of templates, Button Builder comes packaged with a Button Builder Template Builder.  Say that ten times fast!  If you find yourself using a file in another editor a lot, you can go ahead and use this utility to create a template usable in Button Builder.  On another note, if you have RapidWeaver, check the “Window” menu again.  You should be happy to find a “Launch Button Builder” item there waiting for you.

Button Builder has gone through four main version updates.  This app is not new to the Mac app world.  Due to a decrease in interest and more focus on RapidWeaver, Realmac Software has made it Open Source and for the unbelievable price of Free!  Button Builder is available at from Realmac Software.

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