ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

TextField.textColor Property

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ActionScript Language Reference

Text can be formatted via the setTextFormat() and setNewTextFormat() methods.

However, reassigning the

text property clears all previous formatting. To add text to a field

without disturbing any existing formatting, use replaceSel().

See

TextField.htmlText for a full discussion of assigning HTML-formatted text to a text

field. Take heed that

htmlText and text overwrite each other. Regardless of the value of the

html property, assigning a value to text overwrites the value of htmlText, and vice versa.

Usage

In Flash 4 and Flash 5, text fields were represented by simple variables, not complete

objects. Hence, it was common to assign text directly to a text field variable, as follows:

theField_txt = "Welcome to my site.";

As of Flash 6, this practice will erroneously overwrite the TextField instance. The correct

syntax in Flash 6 is as follows:

theField_txt.text = "Welcome to my site.";

See TextField.variable for details.

Example

The text property is our main means of programmatically displaying text on screen. It’s

Flash’s best candidate for a “hello world” example, as follows:

// Create a text field

this.createTextField("theField_txt", 1, 0, 0, 200, 20);

// Drum roll please...

theField_txt.text = "hello world!";

The following code ...