Macromedia Flash Basic 8 and Macromedia Flash Professional 8 provide a variety of text features and options. This lesson introduces you to the three primary types of text you can add to a document. You can add static text for titles, labels, or other text content you want to appear in a document. You can also use input text options to allow viewers to interact with your Flash application--for example, to enter their name or other information in a form. The third type of text is dynamic text. You use dynamic text fields to display text that changes based on criteria you specify. For example, you might use a dynamic text field to add values stored in other text fields, such as the sum of two numbers. This tutorial shows you how to add text and text fields to a Flash document.

After taking this lesson, be sure to explore additional text options described in "Working with Text" in Using Flash.

You can print this tutorial by downloading a PDF version of it from the Macromedia Flash Documentation page at www.macromedia.com/go/fl_documentation.

In this tutorial, you will complete the following tasks:

Set up your workspace

Create an expanding-width text block

Create a fixed-width text block

Edit text and change font attributes

Select device fonts

Add an input text field

Copy a text field

Assign instance names to text fields

Create a dynamic text field

Specify format options

View ActionScript for the dynamic text field

Test the SWF file

Check spelling