Buttons with a color gradient....how do I create them?

[sandrocket]

How can I create nice buttons with those cool gradients. I know about the 3D
and shadows for say a rectangle drawn box. Is that how they do it? Also,
can I make backround colors with those gradients to match?

Or how can I make a rollover that glows with a nice fog-like effect for a
button text.

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

They're pretty much done in a third-party paint program. For gradients, it's
called a gradient fill. Background colors for a page are trickier because
they will tile. In other words, a 100 pixel wide graphic will repeat
horizontally a whole bunch of times so it makes a bad page background. You
can use it sometimes as a table background though because you can design the
table pretty well to fit over the background of a gradient graphic.

The fog effect is simply two alternate graphics. One normal and then a
second that is swapped out using the dhtml swap image function.

Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage\

 

[sandrocket]

Mark, thank you for the information. Can you tell me a good 3rd party? I
like the looks of a button that is highlighted in the center along the
horizontal and the color darkens as you look from the center up and down. It
is as though the light source is shining directly in front of a rounded
metalic barrel. This look cannot be done with 3d and shadows. Thanks...