TYPE

There are definitely times when you want to have some text in your movie—even if it’s simply adding some words to a button.

Most of the text you’ll be working with is “static” text— that is, it doesn’t change.

If you ever get into the coding that uses dynamic and input text (where the user can type into a text field, or where some action on the part of the user triggers a response in the browser window) you’ll need to worry about including your fonts, or allowing the user to specify his/her own. Just remember that for most purposes you want to make sure static text is selected before you type anything

Creating text is a snap. Just click on the text tool and click, or click and drag a box, and start typing. Use the properties palette to establish your font, font color, size, style, format, and so on. The “format” button at the lower right gives you some limited options for leading and paragraph indents.

If you’re going to be using a lot of text in your movie, you may want to create a font symbol, which adds the font you specify to the symbol library; this can cut the file size down considerably.

To create a font symbol select “new font...” from the library menu (at the top right of the library). Select the font you want from the popup menu. Make sure you give the symbol a name that makes sense!

You don’t select the font symbol to use it, the way you drag other symbols to the stage, rather, Flash just remembers all the characters in that font so that the text in your movie that uses it takes up less memory.

This doesn’t prevent you from changing it to any color or size you want, or formatting it in any way. You can also use other fonts in your movie.

text properties

typing

TYPE There are definitely times when you want to have some text in your movie—even if it’s simply adding some words to a button. Most of the text you’ll be working with is “static” text— that is, it doesn’t change. If you ever get into the coding that uses dynamic and input text (where the user can type into a text field, or where some action on the part of the user triggers a response in the browser window) you’ll need to worry about including your fonts, or allowing the user to specify his/her own. Just remember that for most purposes you want to make sure static text is selected before you type anything Creating text is a snap. Just click on the text tool and click, or click and drag a box, and start typing. Use the properties palette to establish your font, font color, size, style, format, and so on. The “format” button at the lower right gives you some limited options for leading and paragraph indents. If you’re going to be using a lot of text in your movie, you may want to create a font symbol, which adds the font you specify to the symbol library; this can cut the file size down considerably. To create a font symbol select “new font...” from the library menu (at the top right of the library). Select the font you want from the popup menu. Make sure you give the symbol a name that makes sense! You don’t select the font symbol to use it, the way you drag other symbols to the stage, rather, Flash just remembers all the characters in that font so that the text in your movie that uses it takes up less memory. This doesn’t prevent you from changing it to any color or size you want, or formatting it in any way. You can also use other fonts in your movie.