Irregular shaped nav buttons

Question

Is it possible to create irregular shaped navigation buttons, such as a cloud, in Muse. I don't want to be limited to a box shape, if possible. If possible, how is it done?

Answer 1

There are a couple of options with Photoshop files that will enable you to restrict the hit area of the button to a horseshoe/irregular shape.
1) If the shape is an actual Photoshop Shape layer with the horseshoe defined via a vector mask: when you import that layer of the file into Catalyst, choose to preserve rather than flatten it. By default in the basic Photoshop import dialog, Shape Layers are set to be flattened. Instead, click the Advanced button in that dialog, highlight the horseshoe layer and choose the "Editable paths and layer styles" option. Then click import.
What happens is: Catalyst imports the bitmap and generates a mask in place of the original PS Vector Mask (you can see this if you look for <s:mask> in Code view). Only the masked area becomes clickable if you convert this layer into a button.
2) If the horseshoe is simply an image layer in Photoshop – add a Vector mask to that layer which will in turn define the shape of the button in Catalyst. Again import the layer and choose to preserve "Editable paths and layer styles."
On a related note, in Beta 1 we automatically flatten Photoshop Shape layers for performance reasons. In the future we should be able to clip the layer's content to the boundaries of the mask while still including the mask for purposes such as this one.
-Eric
Catalyst QE