Determiing the length of text in a textfield?

[Danger Madcow]

I have a 200 pixel wide text field that will be populated with some dynamic text. I would also like to have this text be underlined so that it resembles a HTML link.

How can I determine the length of the dynamic text so that I can resize the underline to match?

Thanks in advance.

[Danger Madcow]

Is this a dumb question or a brain teaser?

[Abelius]

trace(myTextField.length())

[oldnewbie]

Sure about those ()

trace(myTextField.length);

[Danger Madcow]

Originally posted by oldnewbie
Sure about those ()

trace(myTextField.length);

This worked, without the "()".

What a wonderfully simple answer to my question. Thanks for the help, guys.

[nesvarbu]

yep that works, but is it possible to get the length in pixels?

[franclin]

It's not pretty but ryanmacflashkit has a solution at http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...11#post3825311

By calculating the (average font width*#length of the string)= the pixel width.

[franclin]

To get the length in pixels:

trace(myText.textWidth);

This sipmple line of code will trace the width of the text field.

[silentweed]

why do u need to know the length at all? just use html tags e.g

this.createTextField("tMessage", 1, 100, 100, 200, 50);
tMessage.autoSize = true;
tMessage.html = true;
tMessage.htmlText = "<u><a href='http://www.hotmail.com'>This is a link to hotmail</a></u>"

[franclin]

yes it's true I can easily create a text field to a specific dimension. But that's not what I'm doing.

I have over 50 buttons on the stage. I don't want to be placing them on the stage one by one. Instead I have a master button_mc that contains text and an underline. (along with a few other possible rollover animations. – bullets, background colour ect.) First I place the buttons on stage using attach movie. Then I turn all of the bullets, backgrounds an undelines to a width or a _visible of 0.

Then using an Array I push text into each button. Since I don't know the length of some of these buttons. I have created a long text field inside the button. onRollover the underline expands to the width of... the text. Not the text field and not the button_mc. all of which are longer than the text.

textWidth works like a charm. THANKS

textHeight has also helped me to create an animated background for text that is two or three lines deep.

Ps checked out your site. Great job.

[silentweed]

..glad u like my site...

the above textfield in the example does not have a specific dimension, it grows to accommodate whatever text is put in it..

anyway as well as u got it sorted, all is good !!....

[franclin]

Getting text to resize isn't really my problem. Although that does help keep it clean.

I'm animating objects under the text. Think of a hint button. rollOver an object and the 'hint' function is invoked. That function attaches the hint_mc to the stage. It then calls an array and publishes the appropriate array text inside the hint_mc. The background of the array is equal to the width of the text plus a bit of padding. Done.

Without textWidth I was having to make backgrounds equal to the longest string in the Array. Not so nice.

Thanks!

[franclin]

Dear Mad Cow, Sorry I got off track in your thread. Since you want to make an underline in your Dynamic text why don't you use CSS. Use this to controll your dynamic text.

p {
font-size: 9px;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
text-decoration: none;
color: #FFFFFF;
margin-left: 5px;
margin-right: 5px;
}

a {

color: #EC3A00;
text-decoration: none;
}

a:hover {
color: #F54500;
text-decoration: underline;
}

Here is a simple tutorial on flash and CSS: http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx2004/css.htm

[Rehab AAziz]

I've used textWidth property and it worked verywell,then while continue working in .fla file it failed to give me the right value!!!!
it gave me a wrong value than the real value of textWidth?!
does anyone know why?

[franclin]

are you in As2? Is the difference consistent?

[Rehab AAziz]

Yes,I'm in As2?
And difference is inconsistent at all! sometimes it's read right sometimes it's not .
could size of window (shown part of stage) affect the size of textwidth?!,if so,How can I fix it?!

[Rehab AAziz]

I think the problem was with the size of the window of swf.
my function only works well if stage.scaleMode="showAll"; inorder to read textWidth value in properway,but since my final code will be published at html, it doesn't work at all.
it always fail to read proper value for textwidth?!!!
I don't know what to do!
any suggestions.!?

[Rehab AAziz]

I got it.
textWidth property only works with textfield with Single line property selected or multiline NoWrap.

for textfield with multiline property selected it'll read different value for same text if text size is changed ,even if no wrap exist.
it also fails dramatically for other languages than English.

attached sample fla file to show that.
with all textfield takes same text string but reads different value dependent on multiline property and creation on run-time.
click on buttons to change text and observe new values also change the width of textfield and textWidth will change.

I think such a note should be added to flash help.