fText Component

The fText component is used to manage text that is linked to your database which requires formatting.

To use your fText component you first need to create a dynamic textfield on your stage using the Text tool. Press Ctrl+F3 (Windows) or Cmnd+F3 (Mac) to open the properties panel and give the textfield an instance name. You should set the field to accept html formatting and you will probably want to set it to multiline to allow more than one line of text to be displayed in it. (At this point you can also set other properties such as embedding the font in the field.)

Next press Ctrl+F7 (Windows) or Cmnd+F7 (Mac) to open the components panel and drag a copy of the fText component out of the fCMSPro folder and onto the textfield on your stage. Press Ctrl+F3 (Windows) or Cmnd+F3 (Mac) to open the properties panel and give the fText component an instance name.

With the fText component still selected press Alt+F7 to open the components panel. Specify the values of the component's parameters as follows.

The 'field' parameter refers to the name of the field in your database that you want the textfield to be linked to. This value is always required.

The 'editable' parameter indicates whether the field can be edited or not.

The 'controls' parameter is used to specify a list of controls that should be available when editing the field's contents at runtime. The possible values are:

• "kerning"
• "bold"
• "italic"
• "underline"
• "bullet"
• "font"
• "size"
• "align_left"
• "align_center"
• "align_right"
• "align_justify"
• "indent_left"
• "indent_right"
• "letter_spacing"
• "image"
• "url"
• "specialChars"
• "paragraph"
• "cut"
• "copy"
• "paste"
• "undo"
• "redo"
• "print"
• "selectAll"
• "removeFormat"
• "find"
• "replace"
• "toggle"
• "number" - will make a space between controls given number of pixels. 
• ">x" - will create controls listed afterwards in the next row, where x is distance in pixels.
• "mc:my_mc" - will insert movieclip from the library with 'my_mc' identifier name. Predefined values for 'my_mc' are 'divider', 'font label', 'size label'.
• "Full" - will display all controls.
• "Basic" - will display basic controls only.

The 'fontList' parameter specifies which fonts should be available in the controls at runtime. If left blank, every font on the user's system will be listed. Note that if embedding fonts you should ensure that you only include in the list fonts that you have embedded in the swf.

The 'fontSizes' parameter is a list of sizes to be included as options for the user editing the content at runtime.

The 'linkColor' parameter specifies the color of hyper links in the content.

In the case of multiple pages of content the 'startPageNumber' specifies the initial page to be displayed.

The 'targetTextField' parameter is the instance name of the textfield that the fText component should be linked with. This value is entered for you automatically when you drop the component onto a textfield.

The 'undoLevels' parameter specifies the number of actions that can be undone during runtime editing. Leaving the default value of zero will disable the functionality.

To use the fText as part of a template select both the textfield and the component on the stage and press F8 to open the 'Convert to Symbol' dialogue box. Enter an name for the symbol and click 'OK'.

You can now position the clip somewhere in your movie and attach a fTemplate component as described in the Templates & Doc Types tutorial.