CDMenuPro

Tutorial

The bitmap button

An additional program has been available for creating bitmap buttons since CDMenuPro version 2.4: The Button Creator

If, however, you would like to edit a bitmap button or would like to create a bitmap yourself, you will find a description of the image format below.

To design the button image, you will need your graphics software. You can do this using "Paint" which comes as standard with the Windows operating system. We recommend "Paintshop Pro" or another program of similar quality.

The button bitmap is made up of three partial images arranged underneath each other - the upper image is for the button in idle status, the middle image is for the button in mouse-over status (or rather when the mouse pointer is inside the button) and the lower image is for the button in down status. Adjoined to these three images is a single line with a pixel height, which contains information about the transparent color.

Let's say we want to create a button with a width of 200 pixels and a height of 32 pixels, we have to create a bitmap measuring 200 x ((3 x 32) + 1) pixels = 200 x 97 pixels. (See the example below, the color differences of which are very slight)

The transparent color in the example above is yellow. (pixel line number 97)
(is not used in this example)

The button's lettering can be done using a bitmap image or you can let CDMenuPro take care of the lettering for you. If you decide to use the latter, you will only need one button image for all the buttons which means that alterations can be made very quickly.

CDMenuPro has taken care of the lettering in the following example.
Font setting: (CDMenuProEd menu bar: Styles - Central Button Style...")
Arial, Bold, 12, Effect: Stamped.

If the button text is integrated into the bitmap itself then there is no need to specify anything in the button properties dialog window in the feild marked "Button Text".

Demo using round bitmap buttons.