Re: FLASH: Text Quality

[Matt Wobensmith]

Hi Patrick -


You wrote:


>the problem is that the body text (Helvetica 10 pt) is a bit fuzzy or even broken

>up slightly.


Below is the text from an upcoming TechNote that is not live yet. It should help you. 


Matt


---------------

Matt Wobensmith

Macromedia Tech Support

Flash Team Lead




Small fonts are blurry and hard to read


Issue:

Small fonts become blurry in the Flash movie, making them hard to read.


Reason:

By default, text used in text blocks anti-aliases. Anti-aliasing is also interpreted as smoothing. 

Anti-aliasing makes bitmaps and vector graphics display better, but can make small fonts unreadable.


Solution:


One solution is to use a text field instead of a type block.


Text used in text fields does not anti-alias by default. Text fields are normally used for text entry, but can be made non-editable and can display small text that appears much crisper than a type block. 


Additionally, using text fields to display text will decrease file size, as font outlines are not enclosed in the rendered movie. 


This tip is best used with common fonts and not custom fonts. Using a custom font in a text field will require the "Enclose Font Outlines" setting to be checked in the Text Field Properties dialog box, and will make the text anti-alias. If the font outlines for this font aren't included, the font will be substituted on the user's end if they do not have this font on their system.


When using text fields to display small text that is not intended to be edited, there are several additional points to consider. 


-Different computers may render fonts in text fields at different sizes. Draw the text field box larger than the required space to allow for differences in rendering font sizes on different computers. Otherwise, it's possible that the text may get cut off.


-Assign each text field a unique variable name. Since these text fields aren't being used for variable assignment, assign each text field a dummy variable name (eg, "null1", "null2", "var1", etc.) If the text fields aren't assigned unique names, all text fields with the same variable name will display the same text in the finished movie. 


Additional Info:


For more info on creating text fields, see 


Using type blocks and text fields in Flash

14154

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/textfield_borders.htm


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