Input Text
You're familiar with input text if you've ever bought anything online: Chances are you had to type your name, address, and credit card information into input text fields created in either HTML or Flash. The input text fields you create in Flash let you gather information from your audience and then process it, either inside Flash (using ActionScript) or by sending it to a server-side program for processing.
Note
The steps you need to take to exchange, or integrate, data with other programs is so program-and computer-dependent that they can't be covered here. Instead, this section shows you how to create input text elements and access the data your audience types in. For more on how to get that data to your server, check out Flash Help and the other resources discussed in Appendix A.
You create an input text field in Flash using the Text tool, similar to the way you create static and dynamic text. Then, by setting a few options in the Property Inspector, you can let your audience type their own text. You access that text using ActionScript. The following steps show how.
Open the file input_text.fla.
You can find all the files you need for this example—unfinished (input_text.fla) and finished (input_text_working.fla)—on the "Missing CD" page.
If you don't see the Property Inspector, choose Window → Properties → Properties to display it.
Using the Text tool, add a text element to the Stage as shown in Figure 11-5. Then, with the text element still selected, choose Input Text from ...