Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Variations on a Shiny Black Theme

I've noticed a seemingly endless number of "Web 2.0 Shiny Button" tutorials lately. Most of them involving Photoshop. Looking at a couple, it all seems to be about gradients and transparency - something that Inkscape is good at.

I figured I'd take the opportunity to practice my Inkscape chops and play around a bit. So here are some variations on a theme. If you're sick of Web 2.0 with it's shiny, chunky buttons, then take this as your final dose. :)

For anybody interested in playing around with these, you can download the inkscape svg file right here: buttons-fun.svg

First, your typical fat shiny button. Literally 20-30 seconds work in Inkscape.


Next a shiny black and red power button. BTW exactly when did this symbol become synonymous with the power switch anyway?



An over the top version of a vertical scroll control. Either that or a power window switch in your car. This ain't getting any better is it..


Started as a lozenge. Then went for a control button. Ended up with a shiny, buttonless Kensington Trackball.


Is it a remote, or a phone? Not sure. Take away all the buttons and you've got the start of a perfectly good shampoo bottle. Spent about a half-hour on this one. Probably 15 minutes too much. ;)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

MORE MORE! We love the Inkscape! Consider screencasting the Inkscape, please! What you did for Linux Reality's logo is killer. Reading you and heathenx go at it with the design stuff was so cool. Thanks to both of you for letting us in.

True meaning of community.

RichardQuerin said...

Will,

Thanks for the great positive comments! Actually I was fiddling around with Xvidcap last week trying to make a simple screencast, but it was so choppy and of such poor quality that I gave up for the moment. However I see a few more recent blogposts about how to approach it. Maybe I'll actually put something together soon. Maybe. ;)

RichardQuerin said...

Incidentally, as far as articles, I was talking specifically about these links:

http://mugshot.org/visit?post=tvg62rqNdrNPYY

and

http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/06/08/how-to-create-a-screencast-in-ubuntu