Blurry Main Timeline Fonts  | Why do bitmap fonts placed on whole pixel coordinates in a movie clip appear blurry when placed on the Main Timeline? |
Check to be sure that your movie clip is placed on whole pixel coordinates in the Main Timeline. Placement on the Main Timeline determines the coordinates of the text embedded within a movie clip. Even though your text may reside on whole coordinates (x.0) in a nested clip, if the clip is placed on sub-pixel coordinates on the Main Timeline (for example, x.5), the text is in fact displayed at the sub-pixel ( fractional ) coordinate: x.0 + x.5 = x.5. Also, when you publish a movie containing bitmap fonts, be sure to select No Scale from the Scale options within the HTML Publish Settings. If the movie is allowed to scale, its dimensions are determined by the size of the browser window, causing the SWF to stretch or shrink. Any text also stretches or shrinks and displays at sizes different from those specified in your FLA. Bitmap fonts are mapped to specific pixels and must be displayed at precise sizes to render correctly. Bitmap fonts are especially problematic when used in components. The reason is that the movie clips within components that contain text are not positioned on whole pixels. Branden Hall has scripted a workaround that rounds the pixel placement. You can find it at: http://www.waxpraxis.org/archives/000017.html Bold or Italic Text in Dynamic Text Fields Why am I unable to use bold or italic text in a dynamic text field? You can run into problems if you use HTML formatting with an embedded font. Embedding fonts includes embedding the font outlines in the published movie. However, bold and italic fonts are distinct, separate outlines that must also be embedded to display. Embedding bold and italic font outlines increase the size of your movie significantly ”you are tripling the font information that is contained in a movie. Also, you may have to trick Flash into including these outlines. To embed the outlines, you must create a text field to specify each outline. You can do so by creating text fields outside the viewable Stage area that specify alternative outlines ”one for bold, one for italic, and so on. You can limit the embedded characters if you know the types of characters that will be used in your dynamic text fields. (In the Property inspector, click the Character button to specify which subsets of the entire typeface you want to include.) Still, embedding additional outlines increases the file size of your movie noticeably. | 