SWFText Review

Did you ever wonder how those annoying banner/ads on websites are created? SWFText is a program with one purpose, flash-banner making. After downloading, I didn’t notice that help was located in the bottom right corner of the screen, so being adventurous, I just plunged right in and started construction.

This program is incredibly easy for amateurs like myself. With the trial you get 10 applications which is fortunate for me because I have a tendency to inadvertently close out programs. Here are the highlights:

Movie: You control the length, width, height and speed of message. You can also select the number of pages you wish to create in one banner.
Background: Choose from an entire spectrum or create custom colors (including gradients) and/or add your own image.

Background Effect: Over 100 animated effects to choose from. Unfortunately, you have to keep clicking “preview” to do just that. Perhaps someday SWFText will upgrade so that you only have to move arrow buttons as in other editing programs.

Text, Text Effect, Font: These pretty much speak for themselves. Lettering can be quite precise and there are plenty of fonts to choose from, as well as coloring, transparency and even reverse. Some of the effects have been labeled rather oddly as in “pearl” or “zebra”. Picky, picky, picky.

Interaction: Looping and the ability to control what happens when your banner is clicked upon.

Sound: Again, self-explanatory. I was successfully able to download and incorporate wav sound effects as well as midi’s and MP3’s. There is no capability for limiting the amount or altering it, however you have the option of choosing the number of times you wish it to run.
After making my banner I wanted to test its usefulness, so I saved it and then placed it on my site and sure enough, there it was, with the watermark letting everyone know that I hadn’t paid for it. Clicking on it took me to the site I designated.

That’s all there is to it. Although it appears that you cannot really use this to animate images, there is so much that you can do with it that it would only make it more complicated than it needs to be.