I was just playing with the glow effect for the first time.
Is it really that limited in size? I had it on a 100*100 pixel buton and could see a thin, weak glow around it at a 100 percent. Going higher burns the color closer to the object to white, but doesn't create a bigger glow.
I remember creating all sorts of glow effects in Adobe Flash for a browser game called Farmerama. It was basically the same thing. horizontal and vertical glow in one effect. But the size was never an issue. I could create long beams or big soft glows and tween back and forth between different colors.
I was hoping to find something of the sort here, too. But this seems to be more of a one trick pony... ;)