Flash

You only have to look at film titles to see how striking animated text can become and how movement can amplify the meaning of the text, or even add subtexts in the same way body language is a subtext to the spoken word. The following Flash si...

The "_sans" font (equivalent to sans-serif in HTML/CSS) typically corresponds to Arial on Windows and Helvetica on the Mac. For the "_serif" and "_typewriter" default fonts (equivalent to serif and mono in HTML/CSS), Flash uses Times and ...

Flash sites tend to use small graphics and text. That's cool, except that text legible on one machine may be illegible on another. For example 8-point text may be illegible on a Macintosh iBook. Likewise, text that looks good at a monitor r...

For certain users—such as children, disabled users, or those using mobile devices with cumbersome keypads—saving keystrokes is a priority. One way to save time is to fill in commonly used words before the user finishes typing them (i.e., an a...

e., a limited dictionary). That works fine for common words, but in the real world, the definition of "common" can vary by situation. For example, the 300 or 3,000 most common words when talking about computers are not the same words used in ...

Online learning sites require Flash to display complex text formatting, as seen in mathematical equations for science and engineering. For example, the MathWorld site (http://mathworld.wolfram.com) exceeds the limitations of basic HTML fai...

Text in Flash can be formatted in numerous ways, such as using an instance of the TextFormat class to apply formatting to a TextField instance [Hack #42] . For those who prefer using HTML formatting tags, Flash MX and later support basic HTML ...

One of the big design issues that Flash MX addressed was making Flash content as accessible as other web content. The Accessibility panel was added to allow designers to define text strings that would be picked up by screen readers for the si...

You may be familiar with text effects in presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoint, in which text slides in or animates in a simple way. The range of possible animated text effects in Flash is as diverse as Flash is ubiquitous. Altho...

It is perfect for the opening credits to suspense thrillers, crime dramas, and movies about writers, such as Adaptation. In this case, we implemented a typewriter effect complete with sound. The code assumes your Flash movie contains a sou...

This hack presents three more text effects run atop a single code base to show you the various possibilities. Stand-Up Effect This text effect makes the text appear to "stand up" over time. As with other text effects, this is ach...

We've already looked at ways to create scripted text effects [Hack #50] . However, ActionScript-based text effects are limited to creating animations based on changing clip properties over time. Although property-based animation can change t...