Using pixel fonts with macromedia flash

About pixel fonts

Pixel fonts are fonts made of small pixels.
Pixel fonts are also called screen fonts or bitmap fonts.
Pixel fonts are made to show a good quality and readability at a very small size.

Sample

The difference between optimized pixel fonts and fonts used with wrong settings:

Recommended settings:

Place the pixel fonts at integer x and y value on stage.

If you have this option set alias text to “on”.

Most pixel fonts look best at size 8,16,24, this is important.

If the pixel font is in a clip then that clip and all parent clips should also be placed at integer x and y value on stage.

Use the text field and all it’s parent clips at 100% of it’s size, see transform panel to make sure scaling is 100% for all clips.

If you use a pixel font in a scrollable text field than that text field should be set to make the x and y position of text on integer each time text is moved on stage. This is done by “Math.round()”, e.g. Math.round(my_text_field._x)

Wrong settings when using pixel fonts:

Do not use different sizes than 8, 16, 24, etc.

Do not place the pixel font at non-integer x y position on stage. E.g. x and y should be 12.0 instead of 12.3

Do not scale the text field. In flash select the text field then press CTRL+T and see transform panel, it should indicate 100% meaning the text field was not scaled.

Do not scale the swf flash file in your html page. Make sure you use the swf file and all clips in it at 100% scale.

Pixel font resources: