Recipe 9.16. Setting a Text Field s Font

Recipe 9.16. Setting a Text Field's Font

Problem

You want to use ActionScript to change the font used for some displayed text.

Solution

Use a <font> tag in HTML, set the font property of a TextFormat object, or use the font-family property in CSS.

Discussion

You can programmatically specify the font that is used to display text by using one of several different options. You can use a <font> tag if you are applying the formatting using HTML. For example:

field.htmlText = "<font face='Arial'>Formatted text</font>";

You can also use the font property of a TextFormat object. You can assign to this property the string name of the font (or fonts) that should be used:

formatter.font = "Arial";

And you can also define a font-family property in CSS:

p {   font-family: Arial; }

The font specified must be available on the computer on which the movie is running. Because some computers may not have the preferred font installed, you can specify multiple font names separated by commas, as follows:

formatter.font = "Arial, Verdana, Helvetica";

The preceding example uses a TextFormat object. However, you can specify a comma-delimited list of fonts by using any of the techniques described.

The first font is used unless it cannot be found, in which case the Flash Player attempts to use the next font in the list.

If none of the specified fonts are found, the default system font is used. You can optionally specify a font group. Font groups use the default device font within a category. A font group is often preferable to allowing Flash Player to use the default system font, since at least you'll know what general characteristics the font will have. There are three font groups: _sans, _serif, and _typewriter. The _sans group is generally a font such as Arial or Helvetica, the _serif group is generally a font such as Times or Times New Roman, and the _typewriter group is generally a font such as Courier or Courier New.