Problem
You want to use a small point size for your text, but
anti-aliasing makes the font unreadable.
Solution
Use device fonts or adjust the
anti-aliasing settings for the text.
Discussion
Most fonts use anti-aliasing to ensure that the font doesn't appear to have jagged or sharp edges. To achieve this effect, the font's edges are actually blurred very slightly. Although that makes fonts look nicer at larger font sizes, it can cause text to appear rather unreadable once you decrease the point size below 10 points. However, if you want to use small point sizes, you still have some options:
Use device fonts. Using device fonts can have several benefits. As discussed in Recipe 7.9, using device fonts can reduce the file size of the SWF. Additionally, device fonts aren't anti-aliased, which makes them appear more legible at smaller point sizes. However, device fonts may not be the optimal solution in every case. Remember that when you tell Flash to use device fonts, it will use a font on the user's computer. If the user doesn't have the font, it will substitute the default system font. Thus device fonts are not appropriate when you require a specific font face. Furthermore, device fonts won't respond in a predictable manner to some advanced formatting settings. Apply the anti-alias for readability setting. In Flash 8, you can select the Antialias for readability option from the Font rendering method menu in the Property inspector. The setting causes Flash to still apply anti-aliasing to the text, but it will apply the anti-aliasing with settings that will cause smaller fonts to still appear legibly. The Anti-alias for readability option will work well for some fonts at some point sizes. If you want the text to still appear with anti-aliasing but you want to use smaller font sizes of 9 or 10, try the setting. If it doesn't work, you can try the remaining options detailed in this list. Apply custom anti-aliasing. If you want the text to use anti-aliasing, but the Anti-alias for readability setting doesn't make the text legible enough, you can still try the custom anti-aliasing option. Select the Custom anti-alias option from the Font rendering method menu. Then adjust the Thickness and Sharpness settings in the Custom
Anti-Aliasing dialog box. The text on stage will preview the changes so you can see what effects the adjustments are having. Use no
anti-aliasing. Although anti-aliasing can make text look less jagged, when the font point size is small enough any amount of anti-aliasing makes the text illegible. Although you can use device fonts, as noted previously, that option means that you cannot guarantee that a specific font will be used to render the text. If you want to use a specific font, you must embed the font as is done by default. However, you can opt to remove anti-aliasing from the text even if it continues to use the embedded font outline. You can do so by selecting the Bitmap text (no anti-alias) option from the Font rendering method menu.
Even though the Font rendering method options let you specify rendering options, there are some fonts that simply will not anti-alias particularly well. However, you can find a large selection of pixel fonts online that are specifically designed so that they do not anti-alias. One great resource of pixel fonts is . Pixel fonts are made so that each part of the font occupies an actual pixel on the screen, rather than appearing between pixels, as can occur with standard, antialiased fonts. That means that the text will appear clear, even at lower font sizes. However, you need to use the fonts only at the size at which they were designed. For example, if a font is designed at 8 pixels, you should use it only at 8 pixels. Any other font size can cause parts of the font to appear offset from whole pixelswith the effect being blurry or jagged text.
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