Flash CS4: The Missing Manual

Chapter 16. Choosing, Using, and Animating Text

Flash isn’t just about moving pictures. Text is a big part of many projects, and with Flash you can do some remarkable things with text and type. You can label buttons, boxes, and widgets with small, helpful text, and make page headlines pop with big, bold type. When you use large blocks of text—as in newspaper articles or how-to instructions—you can add scroll bars so your readers can see all the text in one place, or you can create hyperlinks that lead to other pages. And of course, Flash can do things to type that wouldn’t enter Microsoft Word’s wildest dreams: morphing paragraphs as they move across the screen; exploding words and letters into dozens of pieces. You can also create the same kind of effects that you see in the opening credits of TV shows. To handle all this variety, Flash provides different text tools. As with any craft, it’s important to choose the right tool for the job. This chapter will guide you to the right tool and share some of the tricks of the trade along the way.

About Typefaces and Fonts

Choosing a typeface for your project should be, fun—just not too much fun. Text should communicate, not distract. Make your decisions with that in mind, and you can’t go wrong. Consider the job you expect your type to do, and then help it do that job by choosing the right typeface, size, container, and background. Beginning designers often treat text as yet another design element and let the desire for a cool look override ...