Set the Letter Spacing
Letter spacing is the space between characters. You can widen the space between characters to make a word appear “airy,” or you can contract the space to make it appear tight or congested. To adjust the letter spacing for a block of text, first select the text with the Selection or Text tool, then click the arrow to the right of the Letter spacing box and use the pop-up slider to select a number. Dragging downward on the slider displays negative spacing, or less space between characters. Dragging upward on the slider displays positive numbers, giving you more space between characters. A setting of 0 is the default spacing. You can also type in a custom number in the Letter Spacing box. A word selected with the Text tool and given a letter spacing of 7 pixels is shown here:

You can change letter spacing on any selected text. For example, if an entire word is selected and you adjust the letter spacing, the change will apply to the entire word. If you select three letters in a sentence and change the letter spacing, only those letters would be spaced at your new setting.

Kerning is adjusting the space between specific characters. Clicking the Auto Kern box in the Properties Inspector allows Flash to determine what the most visually appealing space is between problematic pairs of characters. For example, the “il” letter pair may require different kerning (depending on the font selected) than the “wi” letter pair. If text is monospaced and not kerned, it ends up looking like it has too much or too little space between characters. Clicking Auto Kern addresses the special problems between character pairs.

You can also change the character spacing for a highlighted block of text or between two characters by selecting the text (or the two characters) and pressing ctrl-alt-left/right arrow in Windows or opt-cmd-left/right arrow on a Macintosh. To kern in larger increments, hold down shift when you press these keys. This is an important technique, since the Auto Kern setting in the Properties Inspector doesn’t always do a perfect job. You’ll often need to use this method to manually adjust kerning.

Assign a Character Position
Character position refers to the position of text vertically in relation to the baseline of the text. The default position (on the baseline) is Normal, superscript positions are above the baseline, and subscript positions are below the baseline, as shown here.

To change the position of text in relation to the baseline, click the pop-up list and select any of the settings. Changing character position is useful for footnotes, scientific equations, trademarks, or any design in which you need the text to have an irregular baseline.
Assign Paragraph Attributes
Once you’ve created your text and set the appearance, you may need to finish it off by setting paragraph formatting attributes if you have a text block with two or more lines of text. If your text is in paragraph format, you need to make additional design decisions about such things as indents, margins, and line spacing. By clicking the Edit Format Options button in the Properties Inspector, you can change these attributes.

When you click this button, the Format Options dialog box appears. Here you can adjust various paragraph attributes, such as indents, line spacing, and margins. To change any of the formatting in this box, select the text you want to change and click the slider to the right of the input box. The new value will appear in the input box. As with the other input boxes in the Properties Inspector, you can manually type a number in, too.

To see the adjustments you’re making in real time, position the Format Options dialog box next to the selected text. When you adjust the settings, you will be able to preview them, as shown in Figure 4-2. Once you’ve decided upon an appropriate setting, click the OK button.

Set the Font Rendering Method
In Flash 8 the new rendering settings improve the appearance of text in both the Flash application and the Flash 8 Player. “Rendering” refers to the representation of text or the way it is drawn in Flash. You can adjust the appearance of your type by selecting one of the five styles in the Font Rendering Method pop-up menu in the Properties Inspector, as shown next.

You can preview formatting in real time if you position the Format Options dialog box next to the selected text.

You apply a rendering option by selecting a text block and picking one of the five styles from the pop-up menu. When applied to a block of text, these rendering options can produce dramatically different results, as shown below.

If the sans, serif, or typewriter fonts (device fonts) are selected in the Font list, the text rendering options will not be available.

Text rendering options are important because the text you will be creating in Flash may
be used for many different types of projects. For example, your text may be used in a moving
animation, or it may be used for a text-intensive quiz. Type with fast movement on a screen
requires a different kind of rendering then does static type that needs to be carefully read, and
this is where rendering options come into play. The following provides a description of each of
these rendering options and explains which option is appropriate for different uses.

■ Use Device Fonts Use this option if you want to produce a smaller file size resulting in a faster display. This option also reduces file size because it makes use of the fonts already installed on the viewer’s computer. Device fonts are explained in the next section.

■ Bitmap Text (no anti-alias) Experiment with this option if you find that smallersize fonts (size 8 and under) in your Flash movie appear too blurry to read. Bitmap text has sharp edges as opposed to the fuzzy edges created by anti-aliased-type options that sometimes make smaller font sizes harder to read. You can also use this option to deliberately create a font that appears jaggy and computerized. This option does result in a larger file size because font descriptions are embedded in the SWF (Flash Player) file.

■ Anti-alias for Animation Use this option for text in motion. It will produce text that blends well with the background of the animation resulting in a smooth play. This option results in a larger file size because font descriptions are embedded in the SWF file.

■ Anti-alias for Readability Use this option for exceptionally readable text. This option results in a file size larger than any other rendering option because font descriptions and additional font information are embedded in the SWF file.

■ Custom Anti-alias Use this option if you need readable text but you want to tweak the settings. The default Custom setting is based on the “Anti-alias for readability” settings. From here, you can manipulate the settings to complement obscure fonts or special characters. This option results in a large file size similar to the Anti-alias for Readability option since it also embeds font descriptions and additional information. When you select Custom Anti-alias, a dialog box appears, as shown next. Here you can customize the thickness and sharpness dynamically.

Aliased text is bitmapped text. It appears as if the edges are jagged. Text that is anti-aliased, on the other hand, appears smooth because the edges of the text subtly blend in with the pixels of the background. Theoretically, small anti-aliased text may appear blurry because of this blending of pixels. In some cases, aliased text may appear crisper than anti-aliased text. Since different designs can produce different outcomes, experiment with these settings to find the correct balance of readability and quality for your project.

Sans serif fonts such as Verdana, Arial, and Helvetica are more readable at smaller sizes than serif fonts such as Times Roman or Garamond.

Use Device Fonts
Device fonts are fonts not embedded in the Flash Player file (SWF) you publish. If you design your Flash movie with device fonts, when an SWF file is played on a viewer’s computer, the default serif font and sans serif font in that computer’s system will appear in place of the device fonts. To use device fonts, check the Use Device Fonts in the Font Rendering Method pop-up menu in the Properties Inspector, as discussed in the revious section. A sans serif font will default to a font that looks like Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. A serif font will default to a font that looks like Times Roman. A typewriter font will default to a font that looks like Courier. You can also assign device fonts from the Font list in the Properties Inspector. The device fonts are listed as sans, serif, and typewriter. Since device fonts are not embedded in the SWF file, a movie with a lot of text that uses them should, in theory, be smaller in size. One of your goals in building a successful Flash movie is to keep the file size as small as possible without sacrificing quality.

Identify a URL in the Properties Inspector
URL stands for uniform resource locater, which in plain English is a web address. The address can be an HTML file or a Flash Player file (SWF). The URL address will determine where your file will be located. You can set a link to a remote URL, a local URL, or an SWF file. To assign a URL to a text block, first select the text with the Text tool. Then in the Properties Inspector URL Link input box, type in the full URL. For example, if you want users to link to the Macromedia web site when they click a text block that says “click here for Flash plug-in,” you can easily do so. In the URL Link box for this text block, you would type in the following: http://www.macromedia.com

Substitute a Missing Font

On occasion when you open a Flash file, you may get a Missing Fonts alert. This may happen if your file is opened on another computer or if the file in question was created by someone else and their system has different fonts from yours. To remedy the missing font problem without having to go back and search for and replace each font, click Choose Substitute, as shown here.

When you see the Font Mapping dialog box, select a substitute font from the pop-up menu in the bottom right, as shown next. To dismiss the Missing Fonts alert, click Use Default. Flash will then use the default font in your computer.

When the user clicks on this text on the Web, his or her browser will go to the Macromedia web page. Note that a dashed line appears under the text block with the URL link.

To create a link to an e-mail address, type mailto: in the URL Link box and then the e-mail address. For example, if you wanted to create a link to your e-mail address, you would type something like the following in the URL Link box: mailto:ssmith@nsc.edu, as shown in the following illustration. When the user clicks the text in the movie, a blank, addressed page will open in his or her e-mail application.

Make Text Selectable
Clicking the Selectable button in the Properties Inspector allows the viewers of your Flash movie to select text. By default, text in an SWF file is not selectable.

You may be wondering why you would want to make text selectable. Making it selectable allows viewers to copy text from your SWF file and paste it somewhere else, as shown here, much as users can in an HTML document.

If your SWF file is information-heavy, this may be a feature you’ll want to offer viewers. Input text is selectable by default, so this button becomes dimmed when you select input text.