Didn't mean to start a war here. Point was that Apple, unlike Logitech or even Microsoft, does not allow customization of mouse functions on an app by app basis. There are things that I really like about the Magic mouse, but I don't like it for apps like Photoshop, AE, C4D, or even mail, because I want to be able to do the things I do most often without reaching for the keyboard or drilling down a menu. I don't much care for the scroll wheel zooming in AE so I turned it off on the Mouse Control Settings. Seems like a valid option to me. Customization of mouse functions should be IMHO in the mouse configuration, not on the app preferences. For most Apple Apps the Magic Mouse is great. I use it all the time on my 13" MacBook Pro. I like the gestures idea, but browsing through, sorting, organizing, flagging more than 200 emails a day is a pain with any mouse that you can't assign functions like flag, delete, next message, or move directly to a button. I'd rather left click than  ctrl click or right click and dig through a menu just to flag a message.  I'd rather just move my finger slightly to the right and click the mute button on my mouse to delete an email than mouse way up to the delete button or reach for the delete key with my other hand. I'd rather just press the forward button with my thumb to save an attachment. It's just easier and I can get through my daily e-mail in about half the time. Pick a workflow that you like but don't criticize me for setting up my system so that I don't have to move from the bottom right corner of the number two 30" monitor to the top left corner of the 30" number one monitor just to pick a tool. I set up my tools so that my work is easier, more productive and so that my hands don't ache at the end of the day. ... View more

The problem is with Apple not Adobe on this one. I have several apps that are difficult and frustrating to use with the Magic Mouse. My standard mouse has software specific functions you can assign to buttons and behaviors from the System Preferences. For each app I use I have assigned mouse behaviors for the most common keyboard shortcuts. For example in AE I never have to go to the tool bar or remember the keyboard shortcuts for the pen tool, the roto brush, the selection tool, new layer or the type tool. These functions are assigned to the mouse buttons. The scroll wheel has no effect on the scale of my comp window because I turned off that function in the mouse configuration settings in the system preferences. The same goes for all of my Adobe apps. I seldom have to click on a tool bar or go to a menu to run my normal workflow because I assign one of the 12 mouse buttons to 12 of my most common tasks. In Apple Mail (which I think is a real pain to use with a Magic Mouse) I can read, delete, save attachments, organize to folders, and organize my mail without ever pointing to a specific message or touching the keyboard because every action that I take except answering or composing a new message has been assigned to a button. Apple created some nice functionality in the Magic mouse, but without the ability to customize the mouse on an app by app basis you're always going to run into behaviors that slow you down or frustrate. The magic mouse even frustrates me in Final Cut because it's always doing things that I don't expect.Don't blame Adobe for Apples shortcoming. ... View more

The Roto Brush tool is a little funky to use. Path's aren't editable and in some cases, Mocha (part of CS5) or even drawing masks by hand will get you there quicker. I've successfully use Roto Brush on about eight or ten really difficult projects so far. Each was a real learning experience. I'm preparing a tutorial on the tool that I hope will make it a little easier to understand. Until then here's what I know. The strokes that you apply to the layer with the Roto Brush are vectors. The strokes define search areas, they do not create a mask directly. The stroke position is not animated over time. Roto Brush is, in most cases, faster by far than drawing masks. It seems to be a best practice to use Roto Brush on small sections of the image You must freeze Roto Brush before you return to the composition window or the footage will be re-interpretted and the roto will change. The vector paths you create do not seem to be useful for anything but Roto Brush. I hope this helps. For your application I think a combination of multiple uses of Roto Brush combined with some hand drawn masks may be the best option. Only one of my recent Roto projects was completed by using a single copy of the layer with a single application of Roto Brush. ... View more

There's no option for that. Text layers are the size of the comp even though the text can extend beyond the boundaries. The only solution that I know of is to add a slider control to the text layer then add this expression to the anchor point: [0, -.35*effect("Slider Control")("Slider")] The .35 factor is about where most have the center of their height. You then just adjust the slider to the font height. You can tweak the value if it doesn't fit your particular font. Unfortunately there's no way to directly access the font size with an expression ... View more

Try using thr paragraph alignment palette. Pick center. ... View more

Expert in Video... Maybe the community expert tag should include the areas of expertise... After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere... new to php and content managed web development. BTW.. The suggestion to put your connections in a protected folder was found all over the web and in several tutorials that I watched on PHP security issues. ... View more

You're right about the tag being visible... It wasn't closed and for some reason didn't show up on the page. I'm pushing all of my php code for sending confirmation and notification e-mails and updating the database to an includes folder so that it's easier to put it on separate pages. I've also put header and footer info in includes. I'm loving this technique much more than using library items. Only one thing to change and sync instead of changing a library item that could change hundreds of pages on the site that would have to be re-synced. Thanks for the comments ... View more

The question came to mind when I was in an office of a guy that specialized in SEO. He took a look at my site, checked the code, and I was sure that I saw some PHP tags pop up. My Connections folder with the database un and pw is in a protected directory and there's never a call to put in a password when a page connects to the MySql database. This leads me to believe that I can protect all my PHP scripts. Since no one has responded I think I'll give it a try using includes. This may make my coding a lot easier. Thanks for the reply. ... View more

Thanks for the link. I've looked at lots of articles like that. I don't want to sanatize, I want to prevent. Shouldn't the code be as simple as   $comments = $_REQUEST['comments'] ; if ($comments contains any code or links line <a href = or anything like that) {      GoTo error page} else post the comment to the database Obviously this isn't code, it's the idea. I have code that checks for a valid e-mail addresses. Sometimes I do that with Spry, sometimes with PHP validation. Come to think of it a Spry validation script that checked for malicious code would be a very elegant solution. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Preventing this kind of problem should be easier than loading up something like htmlpurifier 4.0 (a ton of code) that, as far as I can tell, sanitizes the code, which I don't want, rather than simply preventing html or java special characters from being added to the text. ... View more

The easiest way to do this is to use a stroked path to reveal the shape layer, then copy and paste the path to the position property of the arrowhead. Auto orient the arrowhead to the path and adjust the timing of both the stroke and the arrowhead position to match them up. Using trim path makes it more difficult to adjust timing than using start and end for stroke and I can't think of an automatic way to match the timing with an expression. Another option would be to pre-compose your arrowhead layer after you've used the path for position, then use time remapping to adjust the timing. This may be the easiest solution if you have a lot of timing changes to follow. ... View more

I forgot to mark answered. The replies were helpful, but I came up with the solution by trial an error. I would think that this would be a common enough requirement for a contact form that it would be part of the built in server behaviors. Maybe in the next release. ... View more

That's brilliant Dan. I never would have thought of using the toWorld function as a variable. ... View more

The toComp only works within a comp but there's nothing that says you couldn't add a null to your main comp and link the null to the sun pre-comp position then point toComp to the null. Something like this: Null position expression : comp("BG Comp").layer("Sun Comp").position Flair layer Flare Center Expression: L = thisComp.layer("Null 1"); L.toComp(L.anchorPoint) That should work just fine. ... View more

Did you add your comp to the render cue? ... View more

The point isn't that I can't get a link to an external file, it's that you can't make the link open in a new window. ... View more

this is what the code looks like after it is submitted: <p>Here's a <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.hottek.net/samples/TimeRemap.mov">test</a></p> I used typical <a href="http://www.hottek.net/samples/TimeRemap.mov" target="_blank"> test</a> but the code was rewritten to remove the target and insert the "jive-link . . ." stuff. So my conclusion is that you can't write strict html code, you can't embed movies from any but the defined 5 movie hosting sites, and there's no easy way to add code that is unformatted (java script / expressions) in the same way you used to be able to add action script code in the Flash forum. ... View more

Nope! ... View more

thanks for the suggestion but I have always been doing it that way. Just too lazy to type it in that way. Here's a test We'll see if that works. ... View more

I kind of like the new look, but I'd like a better way to see what threads I've looked at. It's a little hard to remember what the colors mean. I much prefered the clearly visible new indication on the old forum. Even generic Google Groups have a much easier way to determine which threads are new and to get you to the most recent post. I'd also like it much more if there was at least an option to skip portions of threads that I've all ready read. I really liked the old way of having only a few of the most recent posts visible with an option to see them all. One of the threads that I checked on this morning was extremely long. I'll have to experiment with linking files and writing code in this new box. One other minor annoyance, it looks like my history didn't get passed to the new database. According to my profile I'm a newbie with, as of this post, one post to the forum. (edit) now it looks like I've done 26 posts... ... View more

still haven't figured this out. If I could simply get the filename of the page the swf lives on then I could write a simple if statement that would play the appropriate movie clips to the ending frame. Here's a link to the site I'm working on. The nav elements roll out into the page as you mouse over them. The amber power lights turn a bright green when the elements reach their ending position. All I want to do is to have the current page hold the appropriate tray in it's ending position. http://byzintek.com/LaconicSite/ ... View more

Thanks for the reply. So any examples of this out there? I'm still completely lost. ... View more

My pre-loader is actually a progress bar and a little movie that runs through the nav system for the site. What I want to check for is whether or not the swf file is all ready loaded. If it is, there's no reason to run the pre-loader again and display the progress bar and all the nav buttons lighting up. There's also no reason for the swf file to load again when you use the back button or when you navigate to another page that uses the same swf file. Before I had the pre-loader it seemed that the swf loaded on the first visit to the site but then always played from cache. With the pre-loader as part of the swf file every time the page changes the pre-loader re-loads the entire swf file. If you need to see the code I'll attach it. At any rate, I'll give your code a try and see if I can get this to work. Thanks, Rick I'll give your code a try. ... View more