Subtitles of the Movie

In this movie, I review the Flash Text tool here in the Tools panel. This is a very important tool. After all, most websites are comprised primarily of text, and this will be true with your Flash sites as well. You may have more images or animations or video sprinkled in between the text, but text is primarily the dominant media type. With Flash CS3, you have many options that go far beyond simply selecting the Text tool and typing on the stage. You can create horizontal or vertical text, change text attributes such as kerning, which is the spacing between characters, line spacing, font size and color, or apply transformations such as rotation and skew. This is only the beginning, and I do devote a whole later section of this tutorial to working with text in Flash. In this later section, you'll learn how to make text scroll or create text fields where the users can input their information. Flash CS3 also includes a spell check feature, and supports cascading style sheets for CSS, which allows you to create text styles that can be applied to HTML, making the design across HTML and Flash content more consistent. Flash allows you to create 3 different types of text elements - Static text, Dynamic text, and Input text. You'll learn about these different types of text elements and much more later.But for now, let me just start In this movie, with the basics and give you an overview of Flash's text capabilities using the Text tool here in the tools panel. Now the first thing you'll notice when you select the Text tool here in the tools panel is all the options available here in the Properties Inspector. Notice that it's quite busy there with properties that you can change. This is another reason why it's a good idea to keep this Property Inspector open. Notice that here you have a drop down for choosing the type of text - static, dynamic, or input. Let's start off with static text. This is the text that you'll use to label things or to add content. You've also got your typeface or font choice here, as well as a preview down here in the lower right hand corner that shows you what that typeface looks like. Also got size slider here, as well as a color chip, and then formatting options - Bold, Italic - and then alignment aligned left. Let's go ahead and choose. Select this text so you can see some of these formatting options. Bold, Italic, Left Justified, Align Center, Right Alignment, or Full Justification. You have Edit Format options such as setting up an indent, which is useful for paragraphs, line spacing, left margin and right margin padding there, as well as your orientation setting here - horizontal, vertical left to right, or vertical right to left, as well as a rotation option, which is available only if you're doing the vertical formatting for the text. Let's bring this back. Notice that I can also adjust the formatting to a degree by changing the shape and size here of my text box. Let's bring this out so the text fits on one line and let's go ahead and center that text within the text box. If I stretch the text box across the whole stage there, I can now center it right on the stage by choosing the Center option, right there. Your Letter Spacing option here is next, with a slide, which you can adjust the spacing between your letters. Next is your Character Position normal, superscript, or subscript. One of the most important settings here is the Anti-aliasing option. Notice that there is some special Anti-aliasing options here, given that Flash is an animation program. There is a special Anti-alias for animation. Anti-aliasing is the blurring of the edges of the text to make them look smooth, and the problem with this is that when you animate with Anti-aliasing, it really slows the computer down and requires a lot more processing power. So they got a special Anti-alias that's a little easier to do animation with. So if you're going to be animating your text, you'll want to choose that option. Anti-alias for readability makes things more legible and easier to read. Most often, I'll use that Anti-alias option since I'm not animating all of my text and I want it to be legible. Then you've got a Custom Anti-alias here. Very nice tool where you can set your thickness and sharpness. And then ActionScript Parameters here, so you can really fine tune your text to make sure that it's as legible as possible. The reason for this is that often times you'll want to squeeze your text down very small, perhaps in a button or navigation system, and by customizing the Anti-aliasing you can make sure that that text is, although very small, still very readable. And lastly down here in the lower left hand corner of the Properties Inspector, you have the width and the height of the text, as well as the location and x and y coordinates. You have a link box here if you want to make your text highlight-able and make it link to other content, other pages. So I can say, for example, Ôhome.swf', go to the home Shockwave file there, as well as a target if you're using frames, and then you can also Auto-Kearn the text if you wish, by highlighting that option right there. This text tool is so very important that you'll want to spend quite a bit of time experimenting and using the Text tool in various situations. Also I recommend using the Help, the Flash Help panel here. Do it, search under Text, to learn some of the nuances of working with the text tool in Flash. I will be covering more about text later in the tutorial. Specifically the three different types of text you can work with in Flash, text options and attributes, and how to use embedded and device fonts. But let me now move on to the next section of this tutorial, now that I've covered in detail how to create some simple graphics, let me now move on and show you how to modify your graphics, how to use the Selection tool, the Lasso tool, the Sub-selection tool, how to edit graphic elements, how to modify strokes and fills, how to create and modify gradients, and also about the Flash Blends feature.