Actionscript Cookbook

8.11. Condensing Whitespace

Problem

You want to condense whitespace in an HTML text field display.

Solution

Set the object’s condenseWhite property to true.

Discussion

When you use HTML in a text field, the optional condenseWhite setting condenses whitespace, as is done in most HTML browsers. For example, the following text would be rendered in a web browser with only a single space between “hello” and “friend” in spite of the fact that the original source has multiple spaces between the two words:

hello          friend

In ActionScript text fields, however, all of the spaces are displayed unless you set the condenseWhite property to true.

myTextField.html = true;
myTextField.condenseWhite = true;
myTextField.htmlText = "hello            friend";   // Displays: "hello friend"

The condenseWhite property works only when the html property is true.

See Also

Recipe 8.10 and the XML .ignoreWhite property