With the easiness of owning and maintaining a website nowadays, more and more tools keep appearing to help us even more in that aspect. Today we’re taking a look at the Pro version of Aquafadas’ new app, Bannerzest, which aims to help users create beautiful Flash-based banners without the steep learning curve of Flash. And with such excellent integration between your Mac and the web, it’s hard to omit this app if you maintain a website.
Design. BannerZest Pro is mainly composed of three windows: the banner project window, the Inspector window, and the media browser window. Even though one-windowed apps are becoming each day more common on the Mac, BannerZest’s windows are very well implemented, non-distracting, and most importantly, easy to understand and use. Aquafadas has done an excellent job on the user interface.
Functionality. Using BannerZest is as easy as dragging your pictures from the media browser (which integrates with Photo Booth, iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom), arranging and cropping them, choosing a theme, tweak some basic theme settings such as titles, and then publish it. The end results are incredible for the small amount of work required — no matter whether you’ve worked with Flash before or not. BannerZest is even capable of uploading your creations directly to your website, be it FTP or .Mac, and provides clear code listing, which you can copy and paste, to easily integrate everything. This last part is especially helpful for when you want to share your creations across social websites such as Facebook or MySpace.
Limitations. The only limitation at the moment are the themes. I say “at the moment” because the Pro version only has two extra themes over the regular version of BannerZest, but Aquafadas is gearing up to launch the so-called Theme SDK, which would allow those with previous Flash experience to design their own themes. The Theme SDK is planned to be released sometime this spring.
Final thoughts. Do you see the animated slideshow above? It was created in — I am not kidding — less than five minutes. Of course, that is the time taken once you’ve gotten the hang of the app, but it’s still impressive. And that example only shows the superficial part, since I did not add some features, such as links to other web pages. One license of the Pro version of BannerZest costs $129, which may seem like a big investment for some users, but is definitely worth the premium over the regular version’s $49 price tag — because besides lacking a couple of themes, lacks the much-useful image browser, and future compatibility with the Theme SDK, along with other limitations explained here. In a few words, what’s not to love about BannerZest Pro? And if you don’t have a website of your own, you can still consider the regular version, which is primed for social network interaction.
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