Poolman,
You can download buttons off the web from various freebie sites. I think I heard Bill R mention that in another post. A simple googling of "web buttons" or something of that nature will most like give you tons of options.

I personally use Paint Shop Pro for my graphic work, but like any similar program, it takes time to become adept at it.

I tried using the DHTML Menu builder early on for the same reasons you are mentioning, but I ran into another issue of it moving around on the screen. Again, Bill R came to the rescue with a solution for that, but I prefered the look of the Flash Menu's. If you are familiar with any reasonably good graphics program, you can most likely take the buttons you like from the ones provided by CC, and stretch/grow them to the size you need.

Remember that Flash Menu builder creates two levels of menus. I'm, not totally sure how the menu decides on it's final size, but im sure it takes into account the sizes of the buttons on both levels. It might be safest to use buttons of the same size on each level, even if you dont use the second level.

Not sure I understand what you are saying, but you can set custom colors in the DHTML menus. You can also build buttons and use them for either of the menu programs.

If you can explain what it is you want the DHTML menu to do, maybe I can explain how to do it, or confirm that it can't do that.

Yes, I prefer the look of the Flash Menu too, and also because I can dial in the exact custom color I choose using the Hue, Sat, etc numerical inputs. I do not have other graphics programs because at that point I might as well sell my pool business and become a web designer! There is work that needs to be done on the Flash Menu Builder. Unfortunately, I need to get this up now.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention that might make a difference is that I actually am not using a "button". I am using the "no image button" in Flash Menu Builder as I only want the "button" to be visible text only. But as discussed, my text is too big for the font i want to keep.

Hi poolman,
I have a newbie question,
why not just make your text like you would normally, highlight it and just link it to your pages, instead of using the Flash Menu Builder?
Also there are some free graghic software out there like gimp:
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

and inkscape:http://files.uberdownloads.com/software/vector-graphics/inkscape.html

Ahhh, hello fellow newb. That is actually what I have already done. I have a great looking menu I made by creating a nice blue box and creating text and making it a link. I have a vertical menu with 10 "buttons". BUT, I had to go and try to get creative and decided that I wanted some sub-menu items listed under a few of the buttons. This means that when you roll mouse over a menu button, several "sub" buttons will appear under it. You have probably seen this on some web sites. At this point I may just provide links from the relevant pages in the text somewhere, but it is not as cool or "pro".

how did you gif animation turn out?
( sorry off topic)
When you want to preview your work in VSD just click the preview, outside the preview when using the html tool you'll just see the html box. this is normal.
you don't have to upload everything to your server to view it, just have to add everything using the "Add File" option under the settings tab. Just an FYI thingy.

Yea, but I want to see it darn it!

lol what can I say.... use preview