Changing Graphics to Buttons

The Button Editor is a tremendous time-saving tool and works great when you first create your buttons as you did in this lesson. You can even use it for graphics already drawn on the page.

When you first design your Web pages, you may want to concentrate on the look of the page and not worry about adding links or making buttons. For example, when the Web page you just completed was designed, the elements were placed on the canvas as graphics. Several ideas for the page were thrown out before the final concept emerged. The buttons were just rectangles with text labels. The rectangles and their text were then converted to buttons to complete the page.

To see how easy this step is, you will create some simple graphics on a page and then convert them to buttons.

1.	Create a new document 400 by 400 pixels with a white canvas. You don't have to save this document. The buttons you create on this page are only experiments.
2.	Draw a rectangle or any shape you want for a button and then add some text. You can get as fancy as you want add a bevel or a drop shadow. The object you just added to the page might look like a button, but at this point it is just another graphic element on the page. To make it a button with links and perhaps even a rollover, you need to convert it to a symbol. When you created your button with the Button Editor, the Button Editor automatically converted your objects to symbols. If you don't use the Button Editor, you need to manually convert the elements.
3.	Select all the elements for the button. Choose Modify > Symbol > Convert to Symbol. In the Symbol Properties dialog box, give your button a name and then select Button. Click OK. Your objects are now a button symbol, and the button has been added to the library. To add a rollover or make any changes, follow the same steps as described earlier in this lesson in the section "Changing Your Buttons." You can close this file without saving it.