Unwanted Flicker on Text of Dynamically Created Buttons

programming flash
1

Hi All,

I have created a class that creates a button with a bitmap underneath, and dynamic embedded text on the top. The buttons upState has a drop shadow on it, the overState, changes the Text from a dark to a light color, and the down moves the buttons image and text by a couple of pixels down and across.

All this works fine, however when I click on the button, I get a very quick flicker of my text field, which was not my intention. I have already tried changing the AntiAliasType from Normal to Advanced, and also tried to caching each button state as a bitmap - however neither of these actions has stopped the flicker. If the button color is set the same for all states of the button, my flicker goes away, so I suspect the problem is something to do with the text color changing.

I am a complete newbie to Action Script, and can not find any solution to this unwanted flicker. Any suggestions would be very gratefully received. My Class is as follows:

ActionScript Code:


package Classes {
    
    import flash.display.SimpleButton;
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.display.Bitmap;
    import flash.display.BitmapData;
    import flash.filters.DropShadowFilter;
    import flash.text.*;

    public class CreateButton extends SimpleButton {
        
        private var _btnName:String;
        private var _btnGraphic:BitmapData;
        private var _btnBitmapDown:Bitmap;
        private var _btnBitmapUp:Bitmap;
        private var _btnBitmapOver:Bitmap;
        private var _btnBitmapHit:Bitmap;
        private var _btnFont:Font;
        private var _btnFontSize:uint;
        private var _btnDownCol:uint;
        private var _btnUpCol:uint;
        private var _btnOverCol:uint;

        public function CreateButton(btnName:String, btnGraphic:BitmapData, btnFont:Font, btnFontSize:uint = 35,
                                     btnUpCol:uint = 0xFF2E0E03, 
                                     btnDownCol:uint = 0xFFE6E4DE, 
                                     btnOverCol:uint = 0xFFE6E4DE) {
            
            _btnName = btnName;
            _btnGraphic = btnGraphic;
            _btnBitmapDown = new Bitmap(_btnGraphic);
            _btnBitmapUp = new Bitmap(_btnGraphic);
            _btnBitmapOver = new Bitmap(_btnGraphic);
            _btnBitmapHit = new Bitmap(_btnGraphic);
            _btnFont = btnFont;
            _btnFontSize = btnFontSize;
            _btnDownCol = btnDownCol;
            _btnUpCol = btnUpCol;
            _btnOverCol = btnOverCol;

            this.downState = createGraphic(_btnBitmapDown, 2, 2, _btnDownCol);
            this.upState = createGraphic(_btnBitmapUp, 0, 0, _btnUpCol);
            this.overState = createGraphic(_btnBitmapOver, 0, 0, _btnOverCol);
            this.hitTestState = createGraphic(_btnBitmapHit, 0, 0, _btnDownCol);
            //this.hitTestState = this.upState;
        }
        
        private function createGraphic(btnBitmap:Bitmap, Xoffset:int, Yoffset:int, btnCol:uint):Sprite {
            var btnSprite:Sprite = new Sprite();
            var btnFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
            var btnLabel:TextField = new TextField();
            
            btnFormat.font = _btnFont.fontName;
            btnFormat.size = _btnFontSize;
            btnFormat.align = TextFormatAlign.CENTER;
            btnFormat.color = btnCol;
            
            btnLabel.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.CENTER;
            btnLabel.defaultTextFormat = btnFormat;
            btnLabel.embedFonts = true;
            btnLabel.text = _btnName;
            btnLabel.cacheAsBitmap = true;
            
            btnLabel.x = Math.ceil((_btnGraphic.width - btnLabel.width)/2);
            btnLabel.y = Math.ceil((_btnGraphic.height - btnLabel.height)/2);
                        
            btnSprite.addChild(btnBitmap);
            btnSprite.addChild(btnLabel);
            btnSprite.x = Xoffset;
            btnSprite.y = Yoffset;
            
            if (Xoffset == 0) {
                var btnShadow:DropShadowFilter = new DropShadowFilter();
                btnShadow.distance = 3; 
                btnShadow.blurX = 10; 
                btnShadow.blurY = 10; 
                btnShadow.alpha = .6;
                btnShadow.angle = 30;
                btnSprite.filters = [btnShadow];
            }
            
            btnSprite.cacheAsBitmap;

            return btnSprite;
        }
    }
}

Thanks in advance for any help.