Flash 8 Cookbook

8.10. Creating Scrolling Text

Problem

You want to create scrolling text.

Solution

Use a text area component.

Alternatively, create a multiline text field and button or movie clips for scrolling up and down. Then add some ActionScript to update the text field’s scroll property when the button or movie clips are pressed.

Discussion

In the event that you want to use a standard scrollbar to scroll text horizontally and/or vertically, you can use the text area component with its built-in scrollbars. You can add a text area to the stage simply by dragging an instance from the Components panel to the stage. If you are planning to use the text area with ActionScript at all, make sure to give it an instance name using the Property inspector. If you want to add text to the text area you can follow the instructions provided in Recipe 8.9.

With a text area, the scrollbars (vertical and horizontal) appear only when necessary. However, with some simple ActionScript you can specify whether and when the scrollbars should appear. Each text area component instance has a property named vScrollPolicy and a property named hScrollPolicy. The vScrollPolicy property determines the behavior of the vertical scrollbar, and the hScrollPolicy property determines the behavior of the horizontal scrollbar. The properties can accept values of on, off,or auto. The default value is auto, which means that the scrollbar appears only when necessary. A value of on means that the scrollbar is visible even when unnecessary; a ...