Are you in a busy office and need to get web design jobs with
complex text effects done immediately? Want to speed up your
productivity but avoid working until Saturday afternoons breaking up
text and hand tweening? Then, SWiSH, the new standalone tool that
creates great font effects and more by David Mitchie, presented during
the Flash Forward 2000 conference, is for you!.
So what’s new
with SWiSH? This tool enables you to create buttons and banners in the
program itself. You can even create a .SWF for importing into Flash for
fast font effects. The “more” emphasis earlier is what’s coming up in
the future of this product. Mitchie is hoping to release an update of
its first version in May that will allow the use of images. These plans
for added functionality will give users more creativity in designing
banners and navigation systems.
There are also future plans
being expressed by Mitchie to support many of the features in Flash
today – this includes scripting, movie clips, audio, vector images and
rollover buttons. Right now, with the first version, you can use its
maximum number of text effects to the hilt. It will also speed up work
productivity. With SWiSH, you can say good bye to all afternoon of
breaking text up, making key frames and hand tweening – plenty of hard
work but is not anywhere near our idea of creativity.
Use it
by controlling all the various attributes of each letter and click
preview. After installing this software, in less than five minutes, you
can produce real content for your sites. There may be arguments about
how all the effects just look alike but remember that there are
“industry standard” and “professional level” considerations on these
things, just like in television and print. Using SWiSH allows you to
produce your sites with that level of standard and expertise.
Currently,
SWiSH doesn’t work in Mac but they are looking into creating a version
suitable with the Mac. Right now, it works on Windows 95+/NT/2000 only.
Still, you can create the files on a PC and use the .SWFs produced on
the Mac, which means that you could create standard clips for your
files and use them in your libraries. Other system requirements include
Pentium 100 or better, 32Mb of RAM, 256 color display or better. It
does not require Flash to be installed, too.
Acquiring and
using SWiSH is easy enough. You just go to the site and download its
trial version. Until you get a key, it will scramble text when you
export to SWF. Currently, SWiSH has a US $30 price tag, with free minor
updates. Major updates would be around US $10 – a big difference in the
price of Flash at US $275. Need we say more? Try SWiSH and see for
yourself!
