8.14. Scrolling Text Programmatically
Problem
You want to scroll text in a text field via ActionScript without requiring user input.
Solution
Use the scroll
, maxscroll
,
bottomScroll
,
hscroll
,
and maxhscroll
properties of the text field.
Discussion
You can control the scrolling of a text field with ActionScript and
without the aid of a scrollbar. For example, you may want to scroll
the contents of a text field automatically to display a word or
selection within the text. Or perhaps you don’t want
to use the ScrollBar component for file size-optimization reasons.
Regardless, you can programmatically control a text
field’s scrolling in both the vertical and
horizontal directions using some built-in properties. You should use
the scroll
, maxscroll
, and
bottomScroll
properties to control vertical
scrolling, and use the hscroll
and
maxhscroll
properties to control horizontal
scrolling.
Every text field has a number of lines, whether it is 1 or 100. Each of these lines is identified by a number starting at one. Some of these lines may be visible, and some may be beyond the border of the text field. Therefore, to view the lines that extend beyond the visible portion of the text field you must scroll to them. Figure 8-1 illustrates this point. It depicts a text field’s display, in which the solid line indicates the object’s border—the visible area—and the dotted line surrounds the rest of the text contained within the object but lying outside the its visible area. To the left of the ...
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