songseeds;
Timeline fading of text requires that the character outlines be included
in the swf (in addition to it being placed in a symbol) . I suspect your
text field is set to dynamic--if so change it to "static" and avoid using a
device font (those preceded by an underscore in the font list). -Tom Unger

songseeds;
Character outlines are automatically included for static "non-device
font" text (device fonts in part allow a way not to include them), for
dynamic fields, you must elect to include all or a sub-set of character
outlines.
-Tom Unger

Hi All,

I'm learning flash and trying to figure out how to do something extremely
simple. You know, crawl before walking!

Here's the situation. I needed to build a movie with a static background that
has a chunk of text fade up, hold for x seconds, then fade out, then a
different chunk of text fade up, hold for x seconds...etc. Thanks to Urami, I
was able to get this going using multiple scenes for each text chunk. HOWEVER,
I ended up having to first create the text in Photoshop as a GRAPHIC, and
importing it into the library.

See the final result at:
http://www.songseeds.com/miracleMAX/long_distance/reviews/index.html

Armed with the knowledge I gained from building that movie, I would like to
simplify the process by entering the text directly into Flash (eliminating the
need to make it a graphic in an external program first).

So, I created a new flash project and opened my successfully working movie so
I could compare what I'd done.

I created a movie symbol called clip_01 with keyframes at 1, 30, & 60.
I created a layer called fadein, entered the text into a field then used
Timeline effects to fade up from frame 1 to 30.
I created a new layer called fadeout, put a text field into frame 30, then
used Timeline effects to fade out from frame 30 to 60.

When I use Live Preview, the text fades up then down and looks fine.

So, back to my main movie, I create a layer called control with keyframe in
frame1 and enter a stop command in actionscript so clip_01 has time to play.
I create a layer called clip_01 and move my clip_01 symbol (with the text
fadein & out) onto the stage.
I create a layer called background, and put my background there.

The ONLY difference I can see between this and the movie that I've got working
is that this one uses a text field in Flash instead of using a graphic, and I
only have one scene at this point. I figured I'd get this working right before
adding others.

When I Test Movie, there are NO fades! Yet Live Preview of my movie clip
symbol with the fades looks just fine!!!

Does anyone see a flaw in this? I'm going nuts, I just can't see what's
wrong!!! Is there some bug using timeline effects with text?

many, many thanks to those of you who help...

richard

[q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]Newsgroup User[/b][/b][/i]
songseeds;
Timeline fading of text requires that the character outlines be included
in the swf (in addition to it being placed in a symbol) . I suspect your
text field is set to dynamic--if so change it to "static" and avoid using a
device font (those preceded by an underscore in the font list). -Tom Unger
[/q]

Hi Tom,

Yes, you found the answer.

My text was already set to static and converted to a symbol, but I WAS in fact
using a device font.

I simply changed the font and now it works.

From what I gather in the online help, character outlines are automatically
included in the swf in flash8 so I'm assuming that I don't have to do anything
to make that happen, right?

Many thanks, Tom.