NetStudio 2000

NetStudio is a software application that makes it easy to create professional looking banners, buttons, and fancy text for your web site. NetStudio guides you through the creation process and then presents your finished product to you.

Decide what you want to create and then begin the guided process of creating. You can also start from scratch if you'd like.

Once you've made all your choices, your finished work is presented for you to look at.

NetStudio is great for quick creation of buttons, banners, and fancy text. I had just one issue that I discussed with a NetStudio representative and that involved the fact that some of the fonts used by NetStudio were not present on my machine. As a matter of fact, they were not present on either of my machines. One running Windows 95, one running Windows 98, and a new one running Windows 98SE. I was told that there were some complaints having to do with the installation of fonts to machines through the software. I can certainly understand that. I don't much care for software that places extra system files on my machines without at least asking me first whether I would like them or not. However, there must be a better solution. This is not a serious concern. You can go download the fonts that are missing from your machine and install them yourself. This also does not degrade the way that NetStudio works and really is only a concern if you just don't like the nags about missing fonts.

Here's what happens. When you pick a style, if a particular font that a style uses is not on your machine you are presented with an error message that says, "NetStudio cannot find *such and such a font* and it will be replaced with the next best". Each time I tried this, the font that was used was either trebuchet, trebuchet ms, arial or Arial. This happened each time I chose either button, banner, or fancy text. It did become quite annoying and I decided to write down the fonts I was missing. Unfortunately, there were just too many. I would think that a better way to handle this would be to allow users to make font choices from their system files as opposed to trying to use a predefined font. Perhaps the software should be configured to use "truly" basic Windows font styles at startup.

That issue aside, using NetStudio is extremely easy, fast, and fun. If you're not a graphics guru, or even if you are, and you need buttons or banners with a consistent style in a hurry, NetStudio is the software to have.

Key Features:

• Wizards (guide you through creation)
• Clip Art (over 1,000 professionally designed images)
• Visual Styles (includes the banners, buttons, icons, etc)
• Custom Styles (create your own styles)
• Shapes (basic, buttons, arrows, stars and flags, and callouts)
• One click web effects (drop shadow, engrave, emboss, etc)
• Drag-Drop Picture Fill (fill objects or blocks of text with a picture)
• Hover Buttons (JavaScript rollovers)
• Unlimited undo and redo
• Web safe color picker
• Auto Choose Format (.gif or .jpg)
• Theme and Site Style Compatible (FrontPage 98/2000 and NetObjects Fusion)
• Cross Fade (combining two separate images into one seamless image)
• Transparency and Transparency fade
• Washout
• Soften edges
• Sharpen or Blur
• Shadow
• Brightness and Contrast

For $89.00 (US) you can't go wrong with NetStudio for quickly creating professional looking buttons, button bars, banners, and fancy text.

NetStudio Website