Using Type > Using type overview

If you use type in your Flash movies, you can set its size, typeface, style, spacing, color, and alignment. You can transform type like an object—rotating, scaling, skewing, and flipping it—and still edit its characters. Your movies can include text boxes for user input or for displaying text that can update dynamically. And you can link text blocks to URLs.

You can also break type apart and reshape its characters. For additional text-handling capabilities, you can manipulate text in FreeHand and import the FreeHand file into Flash, or export the file from FreeHand as a SWF file.

For an interactive introduction to creating type in Flash, choose Help > Lessons > Type.

Flash movies can use Type 1 PostScript fonts, TrueType, and bitmap fonts (Macintosh only). To use PostScript fonts, you must have Adobe Type Manager (ATM) installed on your system (except for systems using Windows 2000, which does not require ATM). See TechNote #4105 on the Macromedia Flash Support Site.

Note: If you experience problems when using PostScript fonts in Flash on Windows NT, you may be experiencing incompatibility issues between ATM and Windows NT. Please consult with the technical support services for ATM and Windows NT if problems occur.

When you work with Flash FLA files, Flash substitutes fonts in the movie with other fonts installed on your system when necessary. Flash also allows you to create a symbol from a font so that you can export the font as part of a shared library and use it in other Flash movies.

You can spell-check text by copying text to the Clipboard using the Movie Explorer and pasting the text into an external text editor. See Using the Movie Explorer.