The Text tool, activated with the keyboard shortcut T, is primarily used to insert text into your Flash movie.
Text is placed in one or more blocks, which come in two varieties – a fixed-width block, and a variable-width block. A variable-width block expands horizontally as you type text, while a fixed-width block has a rigid border and automatically wraps text to the next line when it reaches the border.
In order to create a variable-width block, simply activate the Text tool and begin typing on the Stage.
In order to create a fixed-width block, you need to first draw the outline of the block on the Stage by click-dragging the mouse pointer with the Text tool active. Once the block is defined to your requirements, click within it to begin inserting text.
You can easily alter the characteristics of the inserted text via the Window -> Panels -> Character panel – this panel allows you to specify attributes like typeface, colour, size, emphasis and tracking.(the space between individual characters of the font). You can also adjust the character position – normal, superscript or subscript – and, in the case of paragraphs, the alignment, margin widths and line spacing.
Flash also allows you to create dynamic text boxes, and text boxes which accept user input. You can play with these by selecting the appropriate option in the Text Options tab of the Character panel – they’ll be explained in detail later.
This article copyright Melonfire 2001. All rights reserved.
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