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About buttons on iDVD menus

Buttons are the elements on a menu that viewers click to play movies, display slideshows, and access submenus.

The default button style for most iDVD menus is the text-only button, which consists simply of the button label, or name. For example, a text-only button that plays a movie might say “Play movie,” or it might be the name of the movie itself. Text-only buttons don’t really look like buttons because they consist of words only, but they act like buttons when the viewer clicks them.

You can change the label, or name, of any button by double-clicking it to select the label text and typing a new name. When you highlight the button text, an in-place control appears below the label. You can make selections from its pop-up menus to change the label’s typeface, font style, and font size.

To change the color of the button text, add a shadow to it, and change other attributes of the button itself, press Command-I while the button is selected to open the Button Info window.

You can make any button an image button, which consists of a shape and the button label, or name. Click the Buttons button in the lower right of the iDVD window to access the shape options from the pop-up menu at the top of the pane. With one or more buttons selected, click the desired shape in the Buttons pane to apply the shape to the buttons. Most of the shapes in the Text, Bullets, and Shapes categories appear on your DVD menu only when the button is clicked. You can change any shape button into a text-only button by selecting the button and then clicking the icon (the grey circle with a slash) at the top of the Buttons pane.

You can drag single photos, photo albums, and even video clips onto image buttons to add visual interest to your menus. (An image button that shows a movie is called a “motion” button.) As with text-only buttons, you can change the size of an image button, the color of its highlight, and so on using the controls in the Button Info window. You can also delete the label so the button consists simply of the image portion.

Modifying the appearance of buttons is one of the primary ways you can add visual interest to your projects and express your creativity in customizing iDVD themes.

Related Topics

Changing the appearance of buttons

Changing the label (name) of a button

Changing the image displayed on an image button

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