Change the Orientation
of Text In the Properties Inspector, you can set the orientation and the rotation of text. The orientation of text refers to the direction the text reads. By default, text in Flash appears the way you usually read: horizontally, left to right. You can also set text to read vertically, as shown in Figure below. The Vertical, Left To Right setting creates text that reads from left to right, as text reads in English and many other languages. Text with a setting of Vertical, Right To Left reads in the opposite direction, as is the case in many Asian languages. If you find yourself working on a project that requires text always to be formatted to read right to left, you can globally change the text orientation of the document by accessing the Text Category in the Preferences dialog box.

You can find this dialog box by navigating to the Edit menu in Windows and the Flash 8 menu on the Mac.

To set text to read vertically, click the Change Orientation Of Text button. Then, in the pop-up list, select either Vertical, Left To Right or Vertical, Right To Left. The resulting text will be vertically typed. Note that you will learn another way of changing the rotation of text in Chapter 5 when you practice using the Transformation tool. When the orientation of your text is set to Vertical, you also have the option to rotate it. The combination of these two settings makes your text appear as it does on the right in Figure 4-3. When text has a vertical orientation, the paragraph alignment tools appear sideways as opposed to horizontal. Aligning vertical text would be disorienting if you were using the traditional horizontal alignment icons. For example, as you can see in this illustration, the Align Right button will align a vertical paragraph to the bottom of a text block as opposed to the right, as it would in a horizontal text block.

Device fonts, selectable text, vertical orientation, and rotation of text are settings that are available only for static horizontal text.

The Show Border and Render Text As HTML selections are discussed later in this chapter.

Set Text Attributes in the Menu Even though many Flash designers prefer working with the Properties Inspector, there are those who like the old, tried-and-true menu interface. If you’re a menu kind of person, you’ll be happy to know that you can also change text properties from the menus. The Text menu offers font, size, alignment, style, and kerning selections. Just as in the Properties Inspector, you can set these properties after selecting the Text tool and before inputting the text, or you can modify existing selected text. The settings work essentially the same way. The only differences are the manner in which you select them and the availability of a couple of additional useful tools that appear only on the menu. To set a font attribute from the menu, click the Text tool and go to the Text menu. Click the category that contains the action you want to perform, and then click the right arrow to display the flyout menu for that category. When you select an attribute, the attribute will be set. This illustration shows the attributes that can be set from the Style flyout menu.

It’s just as easy to set a property from the menu as it is to set it from the Properties Inspector. Flash gives you dual options on many settings, so you can work in the environment that’s most comfortable for you.

Check the Spelling of Text

In Flash you can check to see if you have made any typos in a document. Similar to the spellcheck function in a word-processing program, you can check to see whether you made spelling mistakes in your text. This is particularly useful if you are inputting lengthy paragraphs of text or if your document has many layers, scenes, and/or symbols. Before you can check spelling, you must set your preferences in the Spelling Setup dialog box.

Customize the Spelling Setup
The Spelling Setup dialog box allows you to customize the spell checker’s performance throughout your movie. To display the Spelling Setup dialog box, select Text | Spelling Setup from the menu.

The Spelling Setup dialog box, shown here, is divided into four sections.

These sections offer various options:
■ Document Options The nine options in this section are document-specific settings. Most of them deal with checking the spelling in scenes, layers, frame labels, and symbols. At a minimum, make sure that Check Text Fields Content is checked so that you can check text in text blocks.

■ Dictionaries The Dictionaries option allows you to select the number of built-in dictionaries you’d like the check-spelling feature to reference. Click the boxes to activate dictionaries.

■ Personal Dictionary The Personal Dictionary section allows you to collect and save words you use frequently that are not in the built-in dictionary. To create a personal dictionary, click the Browse For Personal Dictionary file icon to the right of the Path input box. It’s the file-folder shaped icon on the right in the previous illustration.

1. In the Open dialog box, browse to the folder in which you want to store your dictionary and then click OK. The path of your dictionary fi le appears. Note that, at the end of the path, the dictionary fi le is named “my dictionary.tlx.”

2. To add or edit entries to your personal dictionary, click the Edit Personal Dictionary button. To add entries in the Edit Personal Dictionary dialog box, click in the box and start typing, as shown next. To edit entries, click to highlight the word in this dialog box and type over it.

■ Checking Options The Checking Options section at the bottom of the Spelling Setup dialog box allows you to decide how certain letters and words (such as URLs, numbers, hyphenated words, etc.) should be displayed. To select an option, click the check box to the left of the option.

Once all the settings have been selected in the Spelling Setup dialog box, click OK and then proceed to spell check.

Use the Check Spelling Feature

To check the spelling, select Text | Check Spelling from the menu after you have set up the features in the Spelling Setup dialog box. In the Check Spelling dialog box, shown in Figure below, you will see that words not found in the dictionary are highlighted. A change is suggested, based on the dictionaries loaded. You can concur with the suggestion and click the Change button, or you can select another spelling from the Suggestions list. You can also type your own change in the Change To input box.

From this dialog box you can also add a word to your personal dictionary by clicking the Add To Personal button. Click the Setup button to return to the Spelling Setup dialog box. Click the Change (or Change All) button to accept a spelling change or click the Ignore (or Ignore All) button to leave the spelling as is. The spell checker will then navigate to the next suspect word. To delete a word, click the Delete button. A message box will alert you when the spell check is complete.

When you perform a spell check, an alert dialog box may appear that says, “Based on your settings, there is nothing to be checked in this document.” If this occurs, go back to the Spelling Setup dialog box and try checking more document and checking options to widen the criteria for your spell check.

If you create a large Flash movie and decide later you need to change a type of font or a recurring word, you can use the Find And Replace feature in Flash to do this. To use the Find And Replace feature, select Edit | Find and Replace from the menu or press CTRL-F in Windows and CMD-F on the Mac. In this dialog box you can find/replace text, fonts, and text color. Simply check the criteria in the Find And Replace dialog box, then click the Find button. To replace text, type the new text in the Replace With: input field, then press the Replace button. The editing occurs dynamically.