Font Problems

[thunderlips]

I am trying to use 2 textfields, one that is STATIC, the other that is DYNAMIC. Why does the text show up differently if the field is STATIC, then if it is DYNAMIC. I have the same properties set up for both fields, ARIAL size 12. The only difference I see between the 2 is that one is static and the other dynamic. Can anyone provide any insight to this as your help would greatly be appreciated?

[Sigma3]

Static text is anti-aliased by Flash, whereas dynamic and input fields are not. Anti-aliasing blurs the edges of the font, making the edges smoother. For some fonts this works very well, but for many the anti-aliasing just makes the whole thing much harder to read. I personally prefer to use dynamic text for most situations - which also has the advantage of making the text selectable by the user.

To improve the quality of anti-aliasing, however, it sometimes works to make sure the text is on an integer coordinate in your movie (example: 802.0 instead of 802.2)

[thunderlips]

Thanks for your help, I am not sure what I am going to do with this, but atleast I know it's an existing problem with the way flash renders the font. I tried your suggestion, with no avail, is there anything I can do to make a dynamic text field look like a static text field, maybe a suggestion of a different font that can be used that would look the same. Again, right now I am using Arial.

[jeboothjr]

Is the problem the aliasing? Is your font embedded in the dynamic text field? Click the character button in the properties and embed the character. That should work.

[thunderlips]

Originally posted by jeboothjr
Is the problem the aliasing? Is your font embedded in the dynamic text field? Click the character button in the properties and embed the character. That should work.

Thanks, worked like a charm. I didn't know that you could do something like that.....will this increase my file size at all? I have read about people embeded fonts but was not sure how people where doing that, but now I know. Thanks again.

[jeboothjr]

It will increase your file size a little bit. You can also use a shared font. Basically having a separate swf with the font embedded in it and importing it into your main swf at runtime. I have run into a few limitations, such as using different character styles (bold,italic, etc) and issues with dynamically created text fields, but if you just want plain text in a regular text field, it works great.