Here are the files and links from the Rocky Mountain Adobe User Group presentation I gave last night. This presentation covered some advanced font management and styling techniques including some powerful utilities and code that we use here at RealEyes. Be sure to check out the CSS URL Encoder exe and some of the other goodies.
Some of the cool stuff covered includes:
- Adding support for super and sub script text to Flash application
- Runtime CSS integration and custimzed enhancements for Flash and Flex 2
- Making Runtime Shared Font Libraries for Flash a reality and optimized development workflow to integrate into production pipeline
- Review of Flex 2 support for font management and styling display
______________________________________________
Recorded Breeze/Connect Presentation (1 hr 45 min)
Presentation Files (PPT Slides/SuperScript Font/Breeze Link)
Flash Font/CSS Development Samples – including runtime font library SIFR Enhancement
External Runtime Flash Font Library Development Toolkit
Flex – SWFLoader and Embedded Fonts
Flex – Embed from meta data
———————————–
More resource links to come soon!
_______________________________________________
Update (3/4/07)- I found that when working with a complex multi-SWF application that yes the font symbols can be shared across swfs loading into the main shell – without reloading for the sub-SWF;s however any sub-SWF that has any of the same characters for a specific font embedded into the SWF itself (including via static text) will hit a conflict and be unable to render the runtime font library. However obviously if you are embedding the font symbols via the runtime font library you shouldnt need the chars in the sub-SWF. As a hint for testing to see if any characters/symbols are ina sub-SWF that may conflict publish your sub-SWF with the ‘Generate size report’ check box selected from your Flash tab of the Publish settings.
_______________________________________________
Update (6/22/07)- I have an updated working version of the Runtime Shared Font Management all via CSS, that has been implemented on a large scale application successfully. If anyone is interested in it send me an email or leave a post and I will package it up.
February 14th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I may have to tidy up the sIFR implementation for this at some point….
February 15th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Excellent presentation Tuesday night! I look forward to more tips & tricks.
March 27th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Wow, this is great info; I’m struggling to get shared fonts working across a site with several languages. Thanks for sharing. Any chance I can get access to the recorded presentation? That would be really helpful.
Thanks again!
April 2nd, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I have updated the link to the Connect recording so it should be good now, as well as open to public viewing. I have however found some minor bugs that have since been resolved with the primary sequencing process. If anyone is interested in the update let me know and I can prepare an updated post with new source.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:31 pm
[...] Again, in Flash, every single font that you embed has to be downloaded by the user. However, after the embedded font has been downloaded, your user doesn’t have to download the font again. You can use it over and over without an increase in file size. This is a great reason (besides good design sense) to limit the number of fonts that you’re using in a Flash application. Remember that bold, italic, and bold italic are all separate versions of the font to embed – each adds its own weight to your file. For advanced Flash developers, a ready of David Hassoun’s thoughts on runtime shared font libraries might be in order. [...]
July 19th, 2007 at 4:59 am
This is one of the best presentations in terms of its value I’ve seen in the last 5-7 years.
Can you share the updated working version of the Runtime Shared Font Management all via CSS. We are working a multilanguage large scale app and we can use that right away.
If its ok with you we would also like to make that a part of our framework and share it with the general public. Our framework is released under the MIT licence
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
David your presentation was amazing but I was curious if you know what work would need to be done to the style and font manager classes to update them to work in an AS3 environment.
October 4th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Thanks for the post on my blog. The system is quite a bit different for AS3, and planning on working on simplifying and streamlining it soon. Some stuff is better, some stuff is more of a pain, all of it is very different. Ill try and remember to email you when I post the new stuff or just check back every now and then!