File Based Text
Any designer wishing to supply a large amount of text data for a Pollstar100 Component should consider doing so via an external file. A well designed Pollstar100 Custom XML File or Sample Data Set should, wherever possible, contain little or no actual web-content but should instead contain references to external sources of desired web-content. There are several reasons for this:
| · | There is a clear division of labour between the acquisition of data and how that data is presented. Abstracting the data from the presentation means that an Application may be more easily maintained. This is especially important where separate individuals specialising in design and data acquisition are working closely together on the same Application.
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| · | Pollstar100 Control file sizes should always be kept to a minimum in order to maximise performance. In addition, content free control files will tend to be more human readable.
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| · | Web-content containing important keywords and appearing solely within a Flash Applet cannot easily be accessed by internet search engines.
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The following Pollstar100 Components can be assigned text data via an external file:
| Generic Textboxes
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| The Descriptions Panel
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| Generic Text Panels
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Use the following properties In order to define an external file-based source of text data:
| TextFromFile
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| set this Property to true to specify that the text data is file-based.
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| Text
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| set this Property to an absolute URL or a partial URL relative to the location of the HTML document that embeds the Pollstar100 Application.
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External sources of text data can be in plain-text or HTML format. In fact Flash supports a limited number of HTML tags providing the means for whole HTML pages to be embedded within a Pollstar100 Application. It is also possible to provide additional formatting rules for HTML text via the use of CSS files. See below for further details.
Text Formatting
There are two ways in which a designer can format a Components' text data:
| · | via the text related Properties
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| These Properties are inherited by all Components that support text data.
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| · | via an external CSS File
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| Typically, text formatting via an external CSS file should be used where there is a need to provide a large amount of text data. Text data must be in HTML format. See below for a list of Components whose text data may be defined in HTML format.
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Using HTML Text
The following Components' text data can be defined in either HTML or plain-text format:
The Title Textbox
The Top Dog Textbox
The Average Textbox
Generic Textboxes
The Descriptions Panel
Generic Text Panels
The default for these Components is HTML format. If this is undesirable, because, for example, a designer wants to display source HTML or XML data, then the TextHTML Property can be used to re-define the text data as being of plain-text format.
The following table lists the HTML tags and attributes that are supported by the Flash 7 Player:
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HTML Tag
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Description
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Supported Attributes
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Example
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table 1
Escaping Reserved Characters
The following escape sequences can be used to preserve HTML/XML reserved characters within text data:
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Escape Sequence
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Character
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Description
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<
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<
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less-than sign
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>
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>
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greater-than sign
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&
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&
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ampersand
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"
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"
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double-quote
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'
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'
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apostrophe
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table 2
See the Custom XML file for Example Three for a practical demonstration of how this is can be of use.
Embedding Images In Text Data
As can be seen from table 1 above, it is possible to embed external JPG and SWF files into text data using the <img> HTML tag. See the Custom XML file for Example Three for a practical demonstration of how this is can be of use.
Rotating Text
It is possible to rotate text data belonging to the following Components:
The Title Textbox
The Top Dog Textbox
Generic Textboxes
The Descriptions Panel
Generic Text Panels
Text data can only be rotated if the text font outlines have been embedded within the Application. See below for details on how to embed text font outlines.
Embedded Text Fonts
Developers need to consider the following two options with respect to text fonts when designing a Pollstar100 Application (or for that matter any web-based Flash application). Both options have advantages and disadvantages:
| · | Use embedded font outlines.
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| Choosing to use embedded fonts for a specific Components' text data means that the font outline information will be contained within the Pollstar100 Applet and hence must be downloaded to the end-users' system along with other external resources such as JPG images and so on. The benefit of this approach is that the end-user is guaranteed to be able to see the Components' text data.
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| · | Use device fonts.
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| Using device fonts means that font outline information is not present within the Pollstar100 Flash Applet. Instead, the Flash Player will attempt to locate a specified text font information on the end-users system. This means that there is less to download; however, if the Flash Player cannot find the specified device font information on the end-users' system then the end-user may not be able to see the associated text data.
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| Note: The _sans, _serif, and _typewriter fonts are device fonts. Font outline information for these fonts cannot embedded.
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The Pollstar100 Web Content Manager Software correspondingly contains the following two Pollstar100 Client Flash Applets:
| · | pollstar100D.swf
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| · | pollstar100E.swf
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Developers wishing to create Pollstar100 Applications that include embedded font information must use the pollstar100E.swf Flash Applet. This version of the Pollstar100 Client makes use of the following external shared library of embedded font outlines:
| · | pollstar100fonts.swf
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A single copy of the pollstar100fonts.swf embedded fonts library file must always be present in the same directory as the HTML document embedding the pollstar100E.swf Flash Applet.
By default the pollstar100fonts.swf embedded fonts library file contains the following embedded font information:
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| · | Times New Roman
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| · | Arial
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Any developer wishing to include additional/alternative embedded fonts can do so by amending this file. To facilitate this, the following Flash source file has been included in the Pollstar100 Software Release:
| · | pollstar100fonts.fla
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The above file can be edited using a Flash IDE and used to publish a custom version of the pollstar100Font.swf shared library file containing embedded font outlines tailored to meet a Pollstar100 Applications' exact requirements. See the following section for detailed information on how to achieve this:
How To Embed Text Font Outlines
The pollstar100D.swf Flash Applet can be used for any Pollstar100 Application that does not require embedded font information. This version of the Pollstar100 Client does not require the presence of a pollstar100fonts.swf embedded fonts library file.
Multi-Language And Extended Character Set Support
The Pollstar100 WCM is UTF-8 compliant, which means that it supports the use of Unicode UTF-8 encoded data. This is good news if you wish to provide scientific symbols or multi-lingual text data that require the use of extended character sets.
To make use of extended character sets, the first thing you need to do is save your Custom XML file and Sample Data File in UTF-8 format. For example, in notepad choose UTF-8 from the encoding drop-down list on the Save As dialog box.
One other thing you need to ensure is that you choose a font type that has support for the extended characters that you wish to use. It is also worth considering using embedded font outlines if the additional overhead in terms of the embedded font data size, is not an issue.
Note: Placing the following tag information within your Custom XML File:
| <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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is good practice but has no relevance with respect to Flash. The Flash Player identifies the type of encoding used in an XML file by examining the data.
