Flash 8 Documentation

Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Flash > Working with Text and Strings > Formatting text with Cascading Style Sheet styles

Formatting text with Cascading Style Sheet styles

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) styles are a way to work with text styles that can be applied to HTML or XML documents. A style sheet is a collection of formatting rules that specify how to format HTML or XML elements. Each rule associates a style name, or selector, with one or more style properties and their values. For example, the following style defines a selector named bodyText:

.bodyText {
    text-align: left
}

You can create styles that redefine built-in HTML formatting tags that Flash Player uses (such as <p> and <li>). You can also create style classes that can be applied to specific HTML elements using the <p> or <span> tag's class attribute, or define new tags.

You use the TextField.StyleSheet class to work with text style sheets. Although the TextField class can be used with Flash Player 6, the TextField.StyleSheet class requires that SWF files target Flash Player 7 or later. You can load styles from an external CSS file or create them natively using ActionScript. To apply a style sheet to a text field that contains HTML- or XML-formatted text, you use the TextField.styleSheet property. The styles defined in the style sheet are mapped automatically to the tags defined in the HTML or XML document.

Using styles sheets involves the following three basic steps:

• Create a style sheet object from the TextField.StyleSheet class (for more information see StyleSheet (TextField.StyleSheet) in the ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference).
• Add styles to the style sheet object, either by loading them from an external CSS file or by creating new styles with ActionScript.
• Assign the style sheet to a TextField object that contains HTML- or XML-formatted text.

For more information, see the following topics:

• Supported CSS properties
• Creating a style sheet object
• Loading external CSS files
• Creating new styles with ActionScript
• Applying styles to a TextField object
• Applying a style sheet to a TextArea component
• Combining styles
• Using style classes
• Styling built-in HTML tags
• An example of using styles with HTML
• Using styles to define new tags
• An example of using styles with XML

You can find a sample source file, formattedText.fla, in the Samples folder on your hard disk, which shows you how to apply CSS formatting to text that you load into a SWF file at runtime.

In Windows, browse to boot drive\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash 8\Samples and Tutorials\Samples\ActionScript\LoadText.

On the Macintosh, browse to Macintosh HD/Applications/Macromedia Flash 8/Samples and Tutorials/Samples/ActionScript/LoadText.

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