Dreamweaver 8 and Flash text

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Can any Dreamweaver gurus out there help me dispel some confusion with Dreamweaver 8's Flash Text objects?

When specifically using Flash 8 I can see all my additional fonts that I've installed. When I decide to use Flash Text in Dreamweaver 8 though the font drop-down menu in the dialogue box does not show any of my additional fonts.

Any ideas on this discrepency? Is Flash Text in Dreamweaver 8 a poor-man's version of Flash 8 technology and I should just load up Flash 8 to get the job done?

Thanks in advance.

 

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i normally have nothing useful to say, but i like to hear myself talk, so i'm gonna give you my 2 cents anyway.

i haven't used flash in years, and i have rarely used dreamweaver. when i'm authoring web pages i always find myself drifting back to notepad like applications.

but as far as i know dreamweaver should be able to use any custom font that you have installed on your system, although that usually will get you into trouble as soon as you publish the page on your site. visitors who don't have the font installed will not be able to render the html page as you designed it. having said that, flash text works somewhat different, i think.

if i remember correctly, there are two ways to deal with custom fonts in regular flash. you can use static text, as in text that will never change ('hello world'), which will convert the text/font into vector graphics. you can use any font installed on your system, and once the movie is published visitors don't need that font installed, since the movie that the flash engine renders no longer contains actual text, just graphics.
or you can use dynamic text, as in text that will change ('welcome back membername'). since dynamic text is never the same and thus needs to be rendered on the fly, the flash engine needs access to the custom font, which can be achieved by embedding the font into the .swf movie.
if you have been using flash primarily using dynamic text, using custom fonts that were not installed on the system, but were directly embedded into the .swf movie, ... meh... then i guess i can see why dreamweaver wouldn't work. however, by the same token, if you have been using flash with dynamic text, then you probably wouldn't have asked the question about dreamweaver in the first place, because you would have already been intimately aware of the process of dealing with custom fonts.

the dreamweaver flash text option, as far as i know, uses the equivalent of flash's static text. so dreamweaver should give you the option to use any custom font as long as it is installed on the system.
so the logical question would be, is the custom font really installed on your system? can you use it in other tools, like microsoft word?

 

Hey there.

The fonts in question are indeed installed and they do show up in the font drop-down box when I'm actually using Fireworks 8 or Flash 8. When I'm in Dreamweaver though the Flash Text dialogue box font drop down list does not list the fonts.

All very odd

 

Well I'm still on MX 2004 and I haven't seen any good reason to change at the moment. Just because it's new, doesn't mean you have to use it straight away. We've all had a little look, but none of my colleagues is the industry (that I know, or will admit) have taken up Studio 8.

Beware, it's a fairly simple mistake to make. We're always being told that IT moves really fast and you have to stay one step ahead of the game. In reality, IT is like any other industry; we all use what we are used to unless we are forced to do otherwise. If it aint broken, don't try and fix it.

 

@darrenecm, i believe, but am not sure, that dreamweaver can only use truetype fonts. are you by any chance using postscript fonts on a legacy windows system? if so, you may have to try adobe type manager: http://www.adobe.com/products/atmlight/main.html

 

Utter cods-wallop

 

I couldn't agree with you more JonnyMX. If an application is giving you all you need to get the job done then there's no need to go to the monetary expense and installing time of getting the latest whizz-bang version.

Have you noticed that application developers are somewhat like retail superstores? You use the store for some months and you finally get used to where all the products are on the shelves and your shopping experience becomes fast and efficient. Then one week the management decide it's time for the old "shelf space shuffle" because their marketing strategy has changed. So they set about rearranging everything, thereby ruining your once efficient shopping workflow.

The same is often true of new application versions. Those pesky developers certainly do introduce new features but while they're at it they shift everything else around. My defence for using Macromedia's version 8 of it's tools is that it's my first time using them and I don't know any better

As for my font issue d-faktor, you are right. I am using Postscript fonts from Adobe with Extensis Portfolio to handle font activation and management. My operating system is WindowsXP Pro updated with all service packs.

So it would seem that Dreamweaver's Flash Text dialogue box is handicapping it's own Flash technology because Flash 8 certainly has no issue reading these postcript fonts. I guess they never thought to use seperate code within Dreamweaver to handle this Postsvript issue. It's already there within Flash 8 so why not use it? Ah well I'll just do it the long way and alt-tab out to Flash 8 and bring in the text that way. Poor design if ya asks me

Thank you all.