Starting with the petty stuff, I cleaned up the code so it is now valid HTML 4.01 Strict. This won’t really make much of a difference for most people, but it should make a marginal difference in speed due to, well, geek stuff.

I moved the VIP signup ad above the banner preview so it’s not in the way of creating your banner. I’ll move it back if I start getting less people signing up, though. Hopefully we won’t have that problem.

Finally, I made a really big update to the text controls. The system that was in place used way too many sliders that were slow and imprecise. They worked great for being easy to make a rough adjustment, and they were snazzy, but they slowed down the user-experience by using to much CPU to operate, and they aren’t at all good at making precise, calculated changes. Also, separating the actual content of the line (the text) from the controls didn’t make much sense from a UI standpoint.

The new system isn’t perfect. It’s a bit of a hack together, but it is in the image of the way that things will be in a few months, and it’s an improvement. Now you can at least see the banner preview while making more of the changes, and you won’t have to scroll so much. As mentioned above, things will be faster because of the lack of sliders (we shed 8 sliders and 20 images/links). There are also way more options. You can have the text size set to anywhere between 2pt and 200pt (vs 6pt to 72pt) and the angle can be set to anything within 30° increments (was -90º, -45°, 0°, 45°, and 90°). The only place you lost control is with the opacity (1% increments is now 10% increments), but it shouldn’t make any noticeable difference in the result.

If you have any feedback for me regarding these changes, shoot me an email using the contact form on the site.

Enjoy!

Corey