Re: FLASH: Type/Fonts

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 09:19 AM 12/21/99 , you wrote:


>What exactly is the deal with the way fonts are handled?

>

>I see where it says that the font you use must also be present

>on the users system, similar to HTML, however I have viewed

>flash sites that use fonts that I know FOR SURE I do not have on my

>system.


The manual is in error.


While you're working on a flash file (.fla), Flash refers to the fonts on 

your system to render the character shapes. So if you start a Flash piece 

on one machine and then work on it using another (notoriously the PC/Mac 

switch), Flash may not find the fonts you started with, and you're in trouble.


But when Flash exports the movie (.swf), it embeds the shapes of all the 

characters that were used. So the .swf is not dependent on the user having 

the fonts used in the movie. (Flash3 has an option to skip saving character 

shapes and just use the nearest font it can find on the user's system. This 

never worked very well.)


The exception is text for text fields. With text fields you may designate 

whether Flash should use system fonts on the user's machine or whether it 

should export character shapes. You can even specify which shapes should be 

saved.


Given all this, you can infer that the fewer fonts you use, and the simpler 

those font shapes are, the smaller your .swf file is going to be. Also note 

that withint the same typeface, a bold, italic, or bold italic character 

will require being stored as a new character. So if you use the letter A as 

bold, regular, and italic, Flash will save it as three distinct shapes. 

It's a good idea in planning a project to decide which fonts you'll use, 

then stick to that decision.

Marc Hoffman

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

.

View the latest from Poison Dart Frog Media: 

<http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/rickfrnd>

Our Flash portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)




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