Flash Fonts

Posted by Leon in flash Jun 4th, 2008 | no responses

A constant worry when creating Flash files is “will my font’s look the same everywhere”? If it’s a standard font like Arial then yes, but a custom font will fail unless you embed it.

You can embed a font in your SWF file so that the font does not need to be present on the devices the SWF file eventually plays back on. To embed a font, create a font library item.

Creating a font library item also allows you to use the font as a shared library item for sharing among multiple SWF files. You must also assign the font item a linkage identifier string and a URL where the document that contains the font symbol will be posted. In this way, you can link to the font and use it in a Flash application. When you use font symbols for dynamic or input text, embed the font outline information.

After a font symbol in a Flash document has an assigned identifier string and URL, use the font symbol in another Flash document by copying the font symbol into the destination FLA file.

Create a font library item

  1. Open the library to add a font symbol to.
  2. Select New Font from the Library Panel menu.
  3. Enter a name for the font item in the Name text field.
  4. Select a font from the Font menu or enter the name of a font in the Font text field.
  5. (Optional) Select Bold or Italic.
  6. (Optional) To embed the font information as bitmap data rather than vector outline data, select the Bitmap Text option, and enter a font size in the Size text field. (Bitmap fonts cannot use anti-aliasing. You must choose Bitmap as the anti-aliasing option in the Property inspector for text that uses this font.)
    Note: The Size setting applies only when you use the Bitmap Text option.

Assign an identifier string to a font library item

  1. Select the font item in the Library panel.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Select Linkage from the Library Panel menu.
    • Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the font symbol name in the Library panel, and select Linkage.
  3. Under Linkage, select Export for Runtime Sharing.
  4. In the Identifier text field, enter a string to identify the font item.
  5. In the URL text field, enter the URL of the SWF file that contains the font item.
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