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Subject: There IS a way... (un-antialiased Text)
From: David Baldeschwieler
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 22:53:39 +0100

Actually, John, Anna, Corrina, et al,

THERE IS A WAY to specify that text NOT be antialiased within a Flash
movie - but it is not without certain limitations.

There is a parameter that you can add to your <html> parameters within
the <object> and <embed> tags for a .swf file called the "devicefont"
parameter. It's values are either true/false. The syntax is as follows:

Within the <object> parameters...
<parameter name="devicefont" value="true">

Within the <embed> parameters...
<embed... ...devicefont=true...> (without the ...'s)

If devicefont=true, the Flash player will actually look on the end
user's (your page viewer's) system to see if they have the font that you
used in your Flash movie. If that font IS present in their system, the
Flash player will actually use that font from their system, rather than
the embeded font outlines withinin the .swf file. And the result is that
the text does NOT get antialiased within the movie.

Remember, this will be true of ALL INSTANCES of THAT PARTICULAR FONT
throughout your movie. It is a GLOBAL parameter that effects the entire
movie, not just certain frames/scenes. And if your end user has other
fonts that you used in your movie, those too will be UN-ANTIALIASED if
devicefont=true. These are important things to consider as a designer.

The fact is that you are really limited in the fonts that you can expect
most users to have (basically Times is about the only one that EVERYONE
probably has. Most users also have EITHER Arial (Windows users) OR
Helvetica (Mac Users), but you can't count on either platform having
both for sure). So you face the same challenges that you do when
designating style sheets and <font styles> within an html page ("Will my
font be there or not?").

Anyway, this is by far the LEAST KNOWN OR USED parameter that the Flash
player supports (Hell, John Croteau didn't even know about it!). But it
CAN be useful in situations where you may have small text that you don't
want to be antialiased (but again, you're pretty much confined to using
system fonts).

One of the additional benefits of using this tag is that in cases where
you have a LOT of text, for example, it can increase performance due to
speeding up rendering time of the text (because it's not antialiased).

I KNOW I am opening up a BIG can of worms with this one... but give it a
try and see how it works for ya'.

Hope that helps!
-DB
-Flash QA Team



Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 05:12:51 -0400
From: John Croteau <croteauaterols [dot] com>
Subject: Re: aliased text?

Hi Anna,

> is it possible to serve up a flash animation
> with everything ant-aliased except for the text?
No

> also could i set this selectivly so that some of the
> text was anti-aliased and not others?
No, but you can change the Quality over time or with a button.
In Flash 3 this is a Toggle High Quality available as a Frame or Button
Action.

- ----------- -----------------------
John Croteau croteauaterols [dot] com (mailto:croteauaterols [dot] com)
- ------------- -------------------------

>Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 10:44:13 -0700
>From: "Corrina Barber (MacTemps) (Exchange)" <a-corribatexchange [dot] microsoft [dot] com>
>Subject: RE: Movie Clip INSIDE a movie?

>Hi,

>Is there a way to export a movie with out anti-aliasing the text
>(small text can look real fuzzy sometimes - unless you zoom in)? I
>know you can set the plugin or control to low but the text looks
>terrible when you do this.

>Thanks
>Corrina

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  Re: There IS a way... (un-antialiased T, John Croteau

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