MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-USING FLASH, Use Manual

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186 Working with Text
To set text field properties dynamically:
1.
Select Window > Actions to open the Actions panel if it isn’t already open.
2.
Do one of the following to create a text field:
■
Select the Text tool and create a text field on the Stage. Assign the text field an instance
name in the Property inspector. For this example, enter the instance name
myText .
■
Double-click the
createTextField
method of the MovieClip object in the Actions
toolbox to add it to the Script pane in the Actions panel. See “Creating text”
on page 162 . For this example, enter the instance name myText as a parameter of the
createTextField
method.
3.
Do one of the following to place text in the text field:
■
Enter text into the text field on the Stage.
■
Set the
text
property of the TextField object. See “Creating text” on page 162 .
4. In the Actions toolbox, select the Built-in Classes category, then select the Movie category,
then select the TextField category, and then select the Properties category. Finally, double-
click the
multiline
property.
5. Enter the following parameters:
■
Object
is the instance name of the text field whose property you want to set.
■
Value
is the value of the property.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the
wordWrap
and
border
properties. The following code appears
in the Script pane:
mytext.multiline = true;
mytext.wordWrap = true;
mytext.border = true;
For a complete list of TextField object methods and detailed descriptions of each, see
TextField in
ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference .
Formatting text dynamically
You can use the ActionScript TextFormat object to set properties of a text field. A TextFormat
object incorporates character and paragraph formatting information. Character formatting
information describes the appearance of individual characters: font name, point size, color,
and an associated URL. Paragraph formatting information describes the appearance of a
paragraph: left margin, right margin, indention of the first line, and left, right, or center
alignment.