Text Problem

programming flash
1

Hi guys,
I have read the tutorial on how to make text more legible in flash under the tutorial section. I have tried it and have discovered some problems.

First of all, I realise that dynamic text don’t work with mask. I have created a movie clip which contains a paragraph of dynamic text. However, after I masked and previewed it, I can’t see a thing.

Secondly, I also realise that we can’t tween dynamic text in flash. Using the same movie( the one with dynamic text in it ), I apply motion tween to it. However, the movie just won’t animate! It was until I changed the dynamic text to static text, the motion tween works again.

So having mentioned the above, I’d like to ask if anyone has any ideas on how to solve these problems. Thanks.

2

i guess it depends how you want to tween it? do you want to tween the box or the actual text?!

3

If you place dynamic text inside a Movie Clip you’ll be able to tween it… to an extent anyway. You won’t be able to tween individual characters.

The masking over dynamic text is apparently a known issue with Flash. I’ve certainly never been able to get it working myself. I’ve just had to find ways around it. It takes a little bit of creative thinking, but usually there is a way around it.

4

erm…I am trying to change the alpha values for that movieclip with dynamic text in it. It didn’t work somehow. Any ideas on how to get it to work? And also, for masking dynamic text, anyone has any creative idea to get around it?

5

Embedding the font, as far as I know will allow you to both animate and mask dynamic text. It does up your file sizes quite a bit… but that’s the price you pay. There’s a button in the properties toolbar (lower right I think) which will let you embed the font outlines of the text… the more peices of the alphabet that you want to display, the higher the file size. (ie just embedding lower case letters is not as big as embedding the whole alphabet and all symbols of a font)

6

Ok. Thanks

7

*Originally posted by david *
**Embedding the font, as far as I know will allow you to both animate and mask dynamic text. It does up your file sizes quite a bit… but that’s the price you pay. There’s a button in the properties toolbar (lower right I think) which will let you embed the font outlines of the text… the more peices of the alphabet that you want to display, the higher the file size. (ie just embedding lower case letters is not as big as embedding the whole alphabet and all symbols of a font) **

d’oh! forgot about embedding. In Flash MX you can click the character button in the properties pane and select to embed the font outlines. - Just a note too, I’ve noticed that alot of fonts will appear blurry when embedded… usually pixel fonts will let you get around this problem.

8

Tried that. It works, but the dynamic text doesn’t looks as sharp as before, which defeats my purpose of using dynamic text in the first place. Thanks anyway.