New Web 2.0 Style Buttons
31'st March 2008

We've just been live for a short while but thanks for all the feedback, we really appreciate it! Over the next few weeks we will be changing things to make GlowDay better.

The first area thats changed is buttons. From the feedback we learned that you liked the flexibility of the old style buttons where the text, colors, fonts and so on could be changed but wanted nicer buttons. We think the new ones are pretty cool, hope you like the changes!

Perhaps the best way to start is to show the new buttons in action. I created a widget (shown below) with a sample of different button styles. Vote and let us know what you think!

Get This - See Results - GlowDay.com

Some Details

A Button can be used to vote, move to the next page or move to the previous page of your Survey Widget.

All widgets are created using our Widget Designer which lets you design your widget exactly as it will appear on your web page.

This paragraph shows how you can customise your widget the way you want it, with total control over size, layout colors, fonts, images etc.

I've included a screenshot of the Widget Designer below. I took this screenshot when creating the Widget shown above. In the screenshot, I have added a Vote Button and am changing its background color.

Changing a buttons style is like changing anything else in the Designer. The box highlighting the Vote Button shows the component you are working on (in this case the Vote Button). To move the button, drag it to where you want it on the widget. You can even have a button in front of other components like images etc.

The properties dialog is used to change colors, fonts etc. for the selected component

With a Vote Button, you can also change the Button Text to suit your design. You can also change the font, text color, size, the buttons' position and even its transparency!

If you like standard style button, these Text Buttons can be customised to meet your requirements.


Image Buttons -- More great design choices

The feedback showed you liked the control and flexibility in GlowDay. These new Text Buttons look great on most designs but a button must still be rectangular. For some designs circular (and other shaped buttons) look great. So we have created Image Buttons -- Images that you can use as buttons -- to give you complete control over the appearance of your buttons!

An Image Button actually contains 2 images. The first image is shown when the page is displayed. But when the mouse is moved over the button, another image is swapped in. This provides a nice visual "Button Effect". Some of the buttons in the example Survey Widget are Image Buttons, some are Text Buttons; the table below shows the images used for these buttons both in normal state and in active state (when the mouse is hovered over the button)

The image corners as transparent so they work well with most page designs, the button can be in front of different background colors.

Normal Image	Active Image

You can create your own images and use them as Image Buttons! Currently, we don't support uploading of images, but you can link to images on your site by specifying the Image URL's when designing the Image Button. Ive included another screenshot (below) of the Widget Designer showing how you can do this.

In fact the red "Next Page" are done using this technique. I created the images using mycoolbutton.com, uploaded the images to our site and changed the URL's to point to these new images.

Custom Image	Custom Image

So what do you think?

Over the next couple of weeks we will be rolling out more changes thanks to your suggestions.

Please let us know what you think using the feedback page, we will do our best to incorporate your suggestions.

Thanks, Garry

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