Working with Text > About font outlines and device fonts |  |

About font outlines and device fonts

When you publish or export a movie containing static text, Flash MX creates outlines of the text and uses the outlines to display the text in the Flash Player.

When you publish or export a movie containing dynamic or input text fields, Flash MX stores the names of the fonts used in creating the text. The Flash Player uses the font names to locate identical or similar fonts on the user's system when the movie is displayed. You can also export font outlines with dynamic or input text, by clicking the Character option in the Property inspector and selecting options. See Setting dynamic and input text options.

Not all fonts displayed in Flash can be exported as outlines with a movie. To verify that a font can be exported, you can use the View > Antialias Text command to preview the text; jagged type indicates that Flash does not recognize that font's outline and will not export the text.

For static horizontal text only, you can use special fonts in Flash called device fonts as an alternative to exporting font outline information. Device fonts are not embedded in the Flash SWF file. Instead, the Flash Player uses whatever font on the local computer most closely resembles the device font. Because device font information is not embedded, using device fonts yields a somewhat smaller Flash movie file size. In addition, device fonts can be sharper and more legible than exported font outlines at small point sizes (below 10 points). However, because device fonts are not embedded, if users do not have a font installed on their system that corresponds to the device font, text may look different than expected on a user's system.

Flash includes three device fonts, named _sans (similar to Helvetica or Arial), _serif (similar to Times Roman), and _typewriter (similar to Courier). To specify a font as a device font, you select one of the Flash device fonts in the Property inspector. During movie playback, Flash selects the first device font that is located on the user's system. You can specify text set in a device font to be selectable, so that users can copy and paste text that appears in your movie. See Using device fonts (static horizontal text only).

You can use movie clips to mask text set in device fonts. See About masking device fonts.