Flash CS4 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Animating Text

In This Chapter

• Creating typewriter text

• Animating text

As authors, text is near and dear to our hearts. Without text, there wouldn't be books, and without books, there wouldn't be authors, which wouldn't be much fun for us. Dummies authors like to have fun with words, which means that we also like to play with text. So whenever we're writing about an application such as Flash, it's a no-brainer to create some flashy text about flashy techniques that animate text. If that's too much Flash for you, we'll excuse you while you catch your breath. Ah, you're back. Get ready to have some fun animating text.

Creating Typewriter Text

Believe it or not, people used to use a device known as a typewriter to write things like letters and books. It had no spell check. And it had no cut-and-paste feature. If you made a mistake, you dabbed on some correction fluid, waited for it to dry, and then typed again. If you remember typewriters (Doug still has one), we're sure that you welcome the power of the computer and the word processor. But if you're creating a Flash Web site for an author, for example, and you want to make it look like his name is being typed, you've come to the right chapter in this book. In this section, we show you how to create an animation that appears as though each word was typed. Follow these steps:

1. Create a block of static text.

   Choose a font type, size, ...