Foundation Flash CS5 For Designers- P8: Flash is one of the most engaging, innovative, and versatile technologies available-allowing the creation of anything from animated banners and simple cartoons to Rich Internet Applications, interactive videos, and dynamic user interfaces for web sites, kiosks, devices, or DVDs. The possibilities are endless, and now it just got better | TEXT Figure 6-14. TLF Text puts some powerful typographic tools in your hands. 329 CHAPTER 6 Figure 6-15. Classic Text is how text was formatted in previous versions of Flash. Now that you are able to distinguish between the two methods of text handling you can turn your attention to the three types of text that both work with. Once you understand this concept then you can start playing with text. Types of text If you select Classic Text in the Properties panel and open the Text Types drop-down you will be presented with three ways to classify text on the stage Static Dynamic and Input. Select tlf Text and do the same thing and your choices are Read Only Selectable and Editable. In a sense Dynamic Input Selectable and Editable are actually the same thing but that only matters in terms of ActionScript. In relation to the Properties panel static and read-only text fields contain text that won t be edited after the SWF is published dynamic text fields contain text that will or can and input text fields contain text that is entered by the user. Each classification carries its own characteristics much of which is shared among all three. Let s get to our penmanship From this point onward in this chapter we are going to work with the TLF feature rather than Classic Text. This is not because TLF is so cool. It is strictly because TLF is so new that dealing with both Classic and TLF text would require more than one chapter in the book. 330 TEXT Read-only text properties Read-only text is the least powerful sort of text in Flash but don t let its humble nature fool you. If you re into racing it s also true that horses run slower than cheetahs but why split hairs As with most other tools in the Tools panel the Properties panel shown in Figure 6-16 controls text field properties in a big way so let s take a look at each configurable item outside of the already familiar Position and Size properties. Figure 6-16. The Properties panel and .
