Tutorial: Fixing Dynamic TextField Cut-Off in Actionscript 3

August 6, 2009

Fixing Dynamic TextField Cut-Off in Actionscript 3

tutorial_flexRecently I was working with the TextFormat class and dynamic TextField instances in Actionscript 3 and was noticing a slight rendering error. It seemed as if some of the beginning and ending characters in the text field were being slightly cut-off. After doing some research I found the culprit and the solution as well. I found that the TextFormat object I was using to format the text of the TextField object(s) wasn’t being fully utilized.

The TextFormat object has two properties which can be used to fix this “cut-off” of text. They are the rightMargin and leftMargin properties and setting them will help to reduce and/or remove this “cut-off” effect (depending on the value set).

In my solution I used a value of 1 pixel for each property and ended up with my desired results. The value you use will be dependent on the placement of the TextField instance in accordance with other content as well as the font being used. This find was a simple yet effective solution. Simply setting the leftMargin and/or rightMargin properties of the TextFormat object that is formatting your TextField(s) instances will do the trick. Just ask yourself which side the “cut-off” is occurring and set a value to the correct property (trial and error the values until desired result is achieved).

5 Responses to “Tutorial: Fixing Dynamic TextField Cut-Off in Actionscript 3”

  1. Andrew says:

    you deserve a comment my friend. I was dynamically changing the width of a button with dynamic textfields and your post here helped me from having to do some crazy character counting. Thanks mon.

  2. DerekKnox says:

    No problem, glad I could help.

  3. Chris says:

    The problem I am having is that font descenders are being cut off on dynamic fields that only populate one line on a text field. So the work ’sign’ in a certain font has a descending ‘g’ and this is cut off. Any solutions to that?

  4. Chris says:

    Actually, I just realised my leading for that format was quite low – resetting this back to 0 sorted it!

  5. DerekKnox says:

    Glad, to hear you figured it out.

Leave a Reply