Section 16.3. Creating Flash Text

16.3. Creating Flash Text

Flash text, much like a Flash button, is a short, clickable Flash movie that you create in Dreamweaver, only Flash text doesn't come with a button background, and it allows you to insert multiple lines of text.

TECHTALK

Flash text is a short Flash movie that contains clickable text content.

To insert Flash text, choose an insertion point in your document window, and grab the Flash Text object from the Insert panel's Flash menu, as shown in Figure 16-8.

Figure 16-8. Selecting the Flash Text object from the Flash menu

Dreamweaver opens the Insert Flash Text dialog box shown in Figure 16-9. Choose the font and type size from the top fields. As with Flash buttons, you can use the font of your choice, even if it isn't web-safe.

Figure 16-9. Build your Flash text from the Insert Flash Text dialog box

Choose the format, alignment, and colors of the text in the following fields. All the text in the Flash movie shares the same properties, so if you want multicolored text or text with different formats and alignment settings, you'll need to create separate Flash movies.

Type the text itself in the Text field, and press Enter or Return to begin a new line. If you check the Show Font option, the text appears in the field in your selected font. However, the Text field does not show your format, alignment, and color options. As before, you'll preview your Flash text before you commit to it, after you've filled out the rest of the dialog box.

Click the Browse button next to the Link field, and choose the page to which the Flash text links. Use the Bg Color color box to set a background color for your Flash text, and then supply a filename for the movie in the Save As field.

You're ready to preview your text. Click Apply, and check the document window. Make whatever changes to the appearance and formatting of your text that you like, and click OK to fill out the Flash Accessibility Options dialog box. Click OK again, and you have Flash text, as Figure 16-10 shows.

Figure 16-10. Dreamweaver adds your Flash text to the page

TIP

Flash text works best as display copy, like the signage in a store. It isn't searchable or selectable, so be careful about using it too often. The most important text on your site should always appear in regular text form.