Macromedia MAX 2005 - Anaheim, CA What’s New In Flash 8
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FlashType Anti-Alias Settings
Anti-aliasing lets you smooth text so that the edges of characters displayed onscreen look less
jagged. The anti-aliasing options makes text more readable by aligning text outlines along pixel
boundaries and is particularly effective for more clearly rendering smaller font sizes. When anti-
aliasing is enabled, all text in the current selection is affected. Anti-aliasing operates with text of all
point sizes in the same way.
Anti-aliasing is supported for static, dynamic, and input text if the user has Flash Player 7 or later. It
is supported only for static text if the user has an earlier version of Flash Player.
A new feature in Flash 8 is FlashType, a new text rendering engine that provides improved anti-
aliasing and readability of fonts.
When using small text in a Flash document, keep in mind the following guidelines:
• Sans serif text, such as Helvetica or Arial, appears clearer at small sizes than serif text.
• Some type styles, such as bold and italic, can reduce text readability at small sizes.
• In some cases, text appears somewhat smaller than text of the same point size in
other applications.
Setting anti-aliasing options for text
Flash provides improved font rasterization that lets you specify the anti-aliasing properties for fonts.
The improved anti-aliasing capabilities are available only when publishing SWF files for Flash Player
8. If you are publishing files for use with Flash Player 7 or earlier versions, you can only use the Anti-
Alias for Animation feature.
You apply anti-aliasing for each text field rather than each character. Also, when you open existing
FLA files in Flash 8, the text is not automatically updated to the Advanced Anti-Alias option; you
must select individual text fields and manually change the anti-aliasing settings. For more
information, see Upgrading Flash 7 content to use Flash 8 anti-aliasing options.
To select an anti-aliasing option for selected text:
• In the Property inspector, choose one of the following options from the Anti-Aliasing pop-up
menu:
Use Device Fonts specifies that the SWF file use the fonts installed on the local computer to
display the fonts. Although this option has the least impact on the size of the SWF file, it also
forces you to rely on the fonts installed on the user's computer for font display. For example,
if you specify the font Times Roman as a device font, the Times Roman font must be
installed on the computer playing back the content for the text to display. For this reason,
when using device fonts, choose only commonly installed font families.
Bitmap Text (No Anti-Alias) turns off anti-aliasing and provides no text smoothing. The text
is displayed using sharp edges, and the resulting SWF file size is increased because the font
outlines are embedded in the SWF. Bitmap text is sharp at the exported size, but scales
poorly.
