Flash® Professional CS5 Bible

Chapter 8. Working with Text

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Finding resources to help you learn more about typography

• Understanding the new Text Layout Framework

• Creating text boxes and choosing text types

• Using the Properties panel to specify styles and alignment

• Controlling font export and display

• Using font symbols and shared libraries

• Troubleshooting font management

• Reshaping and manipulating text characters

• Applying live filters to static text

For designers who love fonts, Flash is a dream come true. Even if you never plan to animate anything, you may want to use Flash simply to see your fonts displayed how you want them, wherever and whenever you need them on the Web. Of course, there are a few exceptions to this unequivocal freedom, but Flash has options that give you text styles to meet nearly any project criteria.

Because Flash is a vector program, it enables you to integrate most fonts within the movie without any fuss. For standard text content, this means that fonts don't have to be rendered into bitmap elements — the SWF files that Flash publishes (or exports) include all the necessary information for the font to appear properly on every browser as long as the Flash Player is installed.

Note

Flash CS5 uses a new engine called the Text Layout Framework, or TLF, to render text in Flash Player 10. TLF adds full support for bidirectional text, flow of text through multiple text fields, and improved control over the appearance of text. Throughout this chapter, you learn how to use TLF text in your ...