Help with this tutorial!

I have been working through this tutorial http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx2004/menu_with_slider.htmt and have everything working pretty well but have two questions/problems:

  1. Does this only work with buttons? I have tried to replace the buttons with MC and keep the same instance name but then it does not work - can I get this effect using movie clips instead of buttons?
    2.How can I get the slider to appear on rollover (on any button) and then start its sliding effect as demonstrated?

Does anybody have some ideas??