Macromedia Flash Article

Visual Control: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Images, and Text

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Whether you consider visual presentation as the role for the designer or the developer, you still strive to have control. In the area of text display, you'll find some killer new features.

Perhaps the most profound improvement is support for the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in onscreen text fields. On the surface this is simply an update to the TextFormat object, a feature you use to control formatting with script. However, CSS goes a bit further, letting you import standard CSS documents that you may be using elsewhere in your site. Also, the support for a:hover will surely lift some of you off your feet; it lets you quickly add rollover effects to dynamic text. Note that like the support for HTML, you can't include every last CSS style known to man—but this is still a very versatile feature.

HTML Embedded Images

By no means has Macromedia ignored HTML text support in the new version. Probably the second coolest text-related feature is three little simple letters: src. That is, you can embed JPGs, SWFs, or other symbols right into text fields. Text flows around the images automatically as shown in Figure 2. You can even use code to call out to the embedded SWFs, for example, to make them start or stop animating.

Figure 2. Image embedded into a text field, with text flowing around it automatically

Small, But Clear, Text

You may be getting the impression that there are a lot of text-related improvements, and there are. Text is a great way of communicating a lot of detailed information in a small space.

No doubt you've seen how small text can look fuzzy because of anti-aliasing. Many users have struggled with this issue, searching for custom fonts that would still look good at small sizes. Now you can get around this issue with one click. Want to make small text look good? Just click the Property inspector's Alias Text button, and you're all set.

Text Metrics

Controlling exactly how text appears is now possible with improved font metrics support. In the past, getTextExtent() only returned width and height for a single line of text, and it wasn't even accurate! New properties (including ascent and descent) make all kinds of complex layouts possible.

Dancing with Pixels: No More Pixel Shift

If you just heard someone out there scream "Yes!" that's probably because he's just learned that Macromedia Flash Player 7 no longer exhibits that tiny little pixel shift with raster graphics. Although this may reduce the workload of the "witch doctors" your company employs to rid your apps of this curse, it's surely a relief to many, even if some of your clients never noticed it.