The product is available as a fully functional free
development version and does not require any installation. The only limitation
of the free version is that buttons will be rendered with a strikethrough on
the button text. However, developers will be able to test all the features
included with the product prior to purchasing a production license. You just
need to extract the contents of the supplied ZIP file and manually add the DLL
file to the Visual Studio Toolbox. I tested the product with Visual Studio
2005.
I would suggest that the vendor creates an installation
program so that the product automatically finds a place inside the Toolbox. I
found it easier to work with the product in a Windows Forms application than
ASP.NET. This is because the product requires write permission to be given to
images directory if you use it in an ASP.NET application, which can be easily
given using the tools supplied by your hosting provider or by contacting them.
Figure 1: .netBUTTON in design view
An interesting feature of the product is that the button is
rendered depending upon the font, size and style of the text. It also includes support for creating buttons in different shapes such as rectangle, ellipse, circle and rounded
rectangle. Moreover, you can use ellipse to create both oval and round shape
buttons. It also automatically generates buttons for various button states
including normal, hover, clicked and disabled state. The vendor has developed
the product in such a way to render properly in browsers without JavaScript support. You can also create buttons dynamically from databases such as SQL Server. The vendor
has posted a list of all features on their website, including a screenshot of
all buttons in different shapes and color.
The product includes a sample application with which you can
sneak preview all button styles by manipulating its size, shape and other
parameters.
Figure 2: A built-in sample in Action
A big advantage of the product is its built-in support for internationalization and string customization. I feel that developers will be able
to create high quality automatically sized button images based on the
programmatically provided string value. Moreover, since buttons are rendered
natively using GDI+, they are high quality regardless of the button size and
scaling.
The product ships with around 30 button styles, fonts and
sizes as shown below.
Figure 3: Button Styles
The vendor has also hosted a live demo of the product on
their website.
I feel that it will help customers a lot as they can directly view the effects
of different buttons. The product ships with comprehensive documentation and
samples for Windows and ASP.NET applications in both C# and VB versions. The
vendor provides excellent support through e-mail. However, it would be great if
they maintain a discussion forum on their website so that users and product
team members can directly interact with each other.
