Button Generator

[exrace]

I am a Newbie to both SMF and bloc's nice themes and was wondering the purpose of the button generator.
Yes I understand it makes buttons but doesn't the theme already have all this?

BTW love the Oxygen theme! 

[IchBin]

In case you add a page or gallery etc that you would like to put a button in for people to click.

[agridoc]

Bloc' s button generators, as well as other similar programs, are excellent tools for making extra buttons but they are also the easiest way to make ALL the buttons if your forum is in a lanquage with no corresponding button set available for the theme you use.

I have searched a lot and found Bloc' s Apollo Button Generator best for my needs and aesthetics. But Bloc has more to offer.

Button Set	Other Languages	Comments
Helios	Yes	"Support for cyrillic" must be enabled to work for other lanquages.
Apollo/Mercury	Yes	Works for other lanquages as is. Normal, sepia and old style buttons options. The old one is my favorite.
Oxygen	No	I would like to test this one but doesn't work with other languages to the moment
Cerberus	No
Juno	Yes	Works for other lanquages as is. My runner up in the range.
Techhead	Yes	Works for other lanquages as is.

They are all excellent sets and the selection depends on theme use too. The codepage must be set to UTF-8 to work with other languages. My estimation for other languages is based on tests with Greek and might not be the case for all.

Bloc may find the time to make the Oxygen and Cerberus sets to work for other lanquages as well. I have made my whole button set with his Apollo Button Generator, I like it and I thank him very much for this.

[bloc]

I am even going to add more button styles for it..but yes, making Oxygen and Cerberus work with other languages should be possible. Its the fonts I use which dictates that..so I need to find alternatives for them - like I did on Helios. "cyrillic" support is in fact another font.

[agridoc]

The new look style is quite eye attracting Bloc. Congratulations.

In the new look style the Button Generator runs inside a frame in Tiny Portal. I have to report a small misfuntion which will affect only people who try to make a button in a non Latin characters language.

I switched to UTF-8 as usually but the character set was not correct. Then I used a direct link (you will find them two messages above) and all worked as usual.

I posted a message then I browsed some new messages then I saw that the Button Generator was working OK inside the frame so I deleted the message.

I came back a few hours later and did some tests.

- There is a problem (if using it inside the frame) for making a non Latin characters language button. Changing the character codepage to UTF-8 doesn' t cure it.
- It can be used inside a frame by changing to UTF-8 and pressing CTRL-N (Autoselect must be set to OFF).ÂÃ,  This forces the UTF-8 codepage in a new window.

I have learned this trick when I first started to look around button generators.

Bloc of course can find a better solution. I would prefer it to a new window as it was before.

[bloc]

I see. That makes sense..since the SMF have already created the window which the iframe resides in, setting the charachter encoding already.

I will add a "open in new window" link underneath.

[agridoc]

The problem is with MSIE, Mozilla/Firefox behaves (as usually but not always) better.
It' s a peculiar behavior, I don't really understand why by just selecting UTF-8 and refreshing it doesn' t work and by opening it in a new window works (in the frame).

The addition of "new window" option is a fine idea. Adding some description like "For UTF-8 (many languages) press new window" might make it better.