Rotate Effect and Non Embedded Fonts in Flex 4

Greg Jastrab -

One big improvement in Flash Player 10 is that fonts no longer need to be embedded in order to rotate text or alter it's alpha. Below is a simple example demonstrating both of these features by using the Rotate and Fade effects in Flex 4.

[flash /wp-content/uploads/2008/09/rotate_and_fade.swf]

Check out how simple the code is below!

TestRotate.mxml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009">

    <Declarations>
        <Rotate id="r" target="{btn}" angleTo="360" />
        <Fade id="a" target="{btnAlpha}"
              alphaFrom="1" alphaTo="0" duration="3000" />
    </Declarations>

    <VGroup horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0">
        <Button id="btn" click="r.play()" label="Rotate This" />
        <Button id="btnAlpha" click="a.play()" label="Fade This" />
    </VGroup>

</Application>

Some changes to Gumbo since I've last posted:

  • Non visual items must go in a Declarations block (see MXML 2009 spec)
  • There are now HGroup and VGroup convenience classes so you can save some typing by not specifying the layout property

I hope everyone’s enjoying their Gumbo!