When set to true and the text field is not in focus, Flash Player highlights the selection in the text field in gray. When set to false and the text field is not in focus, Flash Player does not highlight the selection in the text field.

The type of anti-aliasing used for this text field. Use flash.text.AntiAliasType constants for this property. You can control this setting only if the font is embedded (with the embedFonts property set to true). The default setting is flash.text.AntiAliasType.NORMAL.

To set values for this property, use the following string values:

Controls automatic sizing and alignment of text fields. Acceptable values for the TextFieldAutoSize constants: TextFieldAutoSize.NONE (the default), TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT, TextFieldAutoSize.RIGHT, and TextFieldAutoSize.CENTER.

If autoSize is set to TextFieldAutoSize.NONE (the default) no resizing occurs.

If autoSize is set to TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT, the text is treated as left-justified text, meaning that the left margin of the text field remains fixed and any resizing of a single line of the text field is on the right margin. If the text includes a line break (for example, "\n" or "\r"), the bottom is also resized to fit the next line of text. If wordWrap is also set to true, only the bottom of the text field is resized and the right side remains fixed.

If autoSize is set to TextFieldAutoSize.RIGHT, the text is treated as right-justified text, meaning that the right margin of the text field remains fixed and any resizing of a single line of the text field is on the left margin. If the text includes a line break (for example, "\n" or "\r"), the bottom is also resized to fit the next line of text. If wordWrap is also set to true, only the bottom of the text field is resized and the left side remains fixed.

If autoSize is set to TextFieldAutoSize.CENTER, the text is treated as center-justified text, meaning that any resizing of a single line of the text field is equally distributed to both the right and left margins. If the text includes a line break (for example, "\n" or "\r"), the bottom is also resized to fit the next line of text. If wordWrap is also set to true, only the bottom of the text field is resized and the left and right sides remain fixed.

Specifies whether the text field has a background fill. If true, the text field has a background fill. If false, the text field has no background fill. Use the backgroundColor property to set the background color of a text field.

The color of the text field background. The default value is 0xFFFFFF (white). This property can be retrieved or set, even if there currently is no background, but the color is visible only if the text field has the background property set to true.

Specifies whether the text field has a border. If true, the text field has a border. If false, the text field has no border. Use the borderColor property to set the border color.

The color of the text field border. The default value is 0x000000 (black). This property can be retrieved or set, even if there currently is no border, but the color is visible only if the text field has the border property set to true.

An integer (1-based index) that indicates the bottommost line that is currently visible in the specified text field. Think of the text field as a window onto a block of text. The scrollV property is the 1-based index of the topmost visible line in the window.

All the text between the lines indicated by scrollV and bottomScrollV is currently visible in the text field.

The index of the insertion point (caret) position. If no insertion point is displayed, the value is the position the insertion point would be if you restored focus to the field (typically where the insertion point last was, or 0 if the field has not had focus).

Selection span indexes are zero-based (for example, the first position is 0, the second position is 1, and so on).

A Boolean value that specifies whether extra white space (spaces, line breaks, and so on) in a text field with HTML text is removed. The default value is false. The condenseWhite property only affects text set with the htmlText property, not the text property. If you set text with the text property, condenseWhite is ignored.

If condenseWhite is set to true, use standard HTML commands such as <BR> and <P> to place line breaks in the text field.

Set the condenseWhite property before setting the htmlText property.

Specifies the format applied to newly inserted text, such as text entered by a user or text inserted with the replaceSelectedText() method.

Note: When selecting characters to be replaced with setSelection() and replaceSelectedText(), the defaultTextFormat will be applied only if the text has been selected up to and including the last character. Here is an example:

     var my_txt:TextField new TextField();
     my_txt.text = "Flash Macintosh version";
     var my_fmt:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
     my_fmt.color = 0xFF0000;
     my_txt.defaultTextFormat = my_fmt;
     my_txt.setSelection(6,15); // partial text selected - defaultTextFormat not applied
     my_txt.setSelection(6,23); // text selected to end - defaultTextFormat applied
     my_txt.replaceSelectedText("Windows version");
     

When you access the defaultTextFormat property, the returned TextFormat object has all of its properties defined. No property is null.

Note: You can't set this property if a style sheet is applied to the text field.

Specifies whether the text field is a password text field. If the value of this property is true, the text field is treated as a password text field and hides the input characters using asterisks instead of the actual characters. If false, the text field is not treated as a password text field. When password mode is enabled, the Cut and Copy commands and their corresponding keyboard shortcuts will not function. This security mechanism prevents an unscrupulous user from using the shortcuts to discover a password on an unattended computer.

Specifies whether the object receives doubleClick events. The default value is false, which means that by default an InteractiveObject instance does not receive doubleClick events. If the doubleClickEnabled property is set to true, the instance receives doubleClick events within its bounds. The mouseEnabled property of the InteractiveObject instance must also be set to true for the object to receive doubleClick events.

No event is dispatched by setting this property. You must use the addEventListener() method to add an event listener for the doubleClick event.

Specifies whether to render by using embedded font outlines. If false, Flash Player renders the text field by using device fonts.

If you set the embedFonts property to true for a text field, you must specify a font for that text by using the font property of a TextFormat object applied to the text field. If the specified font is not embedded in the SWF file, the text is not displayed.

Specifies whether this object displays a focus rectangle. It can take one of three values: true, false, or null. Values of true and false work as expected, specifying whether or not the focus rectangle appears. A value of null indicates that this object obeys the stageFocusRect property of the Stage.

The type of grid fitting used for this text field. This property applies only if the flash.text.AntiAliasType property of the text field is set to flash.text.AntiAliasType.ADVANCED.

The type of grid fitting used determines whether Flash Player forces strong horizontal and vertical lines to fit to a pixel or subpixel grid, or not at all.

For the flash.text.GridFitType property, you can use the following string values:

Contains the HTML representation of the text field contents.

Flash Player supports the following HTML tags:

Flash Player and AIR support the following HTML entities:

Flash Player and AIR also support explicit character codes, such as & (ASCII ampersand) and € (Unicode € symbol).

If true, the paddingLeft and paddingRight styles will not add space around the text of the component.

The beginning of this UITextField's chain of inheriting styles. The getStyle() method accesses inheritingStyles[styleName] to search the entire prototype-linked chain. This object is set up by the initProtoChain() method. You typically never need to access this property directly.

The number of characters in a text field. A character such as tab (\t) counts as one character.

The maximum number of characters that the text field can contain, as entered by a user. A script can insert more text than maxChars allows; the maxChars property indicates only how much text a user can enter. If the value of this property is 0, a user can enter an unlimited amount of text.

The maximum value of scrollH.

The maximum value of scrollV.

Specifies whether this object receives mouse, or other user input, messages. The default value is true, which means that by default any InteractiveObject instance that is on the display list receives mouse events or other user input events. If mouseEnabled is set to false, the instance does not receive any mouse events (or other user input events like keybaord events). Any children of this instance on the display list are not affected. To change the mouseEnabled behavior for all children of an object on the display list, use flash.display.DisplayObjectContainer.mouseChildren.

No event is dispatched by setting this property. You must use the addEventListener() method to create interactive functionality.

A Boolean value that indicates whether Flash Player automatically scrolls multiline text fields when the user clicks a text field and rolls the mouse wheel. By default, this value is true. This property is useful if you want to prevent mouse wheel scrolling of text fields, or implement your own text field scrolling.

Indicates whether field is a multiline text field. If the value is true, the text field is multiline; if the value is false, the text field is a single-line text field. In a field of type TextFieldType.INPUT, the multiline value determines whether the Enter key creates a new line (a value of false, and the Enter key is ignored). If you paste text into a TextField with a multiline value of false, newlines are stripped out of the text.

Depth of this object in the containment hierarchy. This number is used by the measurement and layout code. The value is 0 if this component is not on the DisplayList.

The beginning of this UITextField's chain of non-inheriting styles. The getStyle() method accesses nonInheritingStyles[styleName] method to search the entire prototype-linked chain. This object is set up by the initProtoChain() method. You typically never need to access this property directly.

Unlike textHeight, this returns a non-zero value even when the text is empty. In this case, it returns what the textHeight would be if the text weren't empty.

Defines the number of text lines in a multiline text field. If wordWrap property is set to true, the number of lines increases when text wraps.

Indicates the set of characters that a user can enter into the text field. If the value of the restrict property is null, you can enter any character. If the value of the restrict property is an empty string, you cannot enter any character. If the value of the restrict property is a string of characters, you can enter only characters in the string into the text field. The string is scanned from left to right. You can specify a range by using the hyphen (-) character. Only user interaction is restricted; a script can put any text into the text field. This property does not synchronize with the Embed font options in the Property inspector.

If the string begins with a caret (^) character, all characters are initially accepted and succeeding characters in the string are excluded from the set of accepted characters. If the string does not begin with a caret (^) character, no characters are initially accepted and succeeding characters in the string are included in the set of accepted characters.

The following example allows only uppercase characters, spaces, and numbers to be entered into a text field:

     my_txt.restrict = "A-Z 0-9";
     

The following example includes all characters, but excludes lowercase letters:

     my_txt.restrict = "^a-z";
     

You can use a backslash to enter a ^ or - verbatim. The accepted backslash sequences are \-, \^ or \\. The backslash must be an actual character in the string, so when specified in ActionScript, a double backslash must be used. For example, the following code includes only the dash (-) and caret (^):

     my_txt.restrict = "\\-\\^";
     

The ^ can be used anywhere in the string to toggle between including characters and excluding characters. The following code includes only uppercase letters, but excludes the uppercase letter Q:

     my_txt.restrict = "A-Z^Q";
     

You can use the \u escape sequence to construct restrict strings. The following code includes only the characters from ASCII 32 (space) to ASCII 126 (tilde).

     my_txt.restrict = "\u0020-\u007E";
     

The current horizontal scrolling position. If the scrollH property is 0, the text is not horizontally scrolled. This property value is an integer that represents the horizontal position in pixels.

The units of horizontal scrolling are pixels, whereas the units of vertical scrolling are lines. Horizontal scrolling is measured in pixels because most fonts you typically use are proportionally spaced; that is, the characters can have different widths. Flash Player performs vertical scrolling by line because users usually want to see a complete line of text rather than a partial line. Even if a line uses multiple fonts, the height of the line adjusts to fit the largest font in use.

Note: The scrollH property is zero-based, not 1-based like the scrollV vertical scrolling property.

The vertical position of text in a text field. The scrollV property is useful for directing users to a specific paragraph in a long passage, or creating scrolling text fields.

The units of vertical scrolling are lines, whereas the units of horizontal scrolling are pixels. If the first line displayed is the first line in the text field, scrollV is set to 1 (not 0). Horizontal scrolling is measured in pixels because most fonts are proportionally spaced; that is, the characters can have different widths. Flash performs vertical scrolling by line because users usually want to see a complete line of text rather than a partial line. Even if there are multiple fonts on a line, the height of the line adjusts to fit the largest font in use.

A Boolean value that indicates whether the text field is selectable. The value true indicates that the text is selectable. The selectable property controls whether a text field is selectable, not whether a text field is editable. A dynamic text field can be selectable even if it is not editable. If a dynamic text field is not selectable, the user cannot select its text.

If selectable is set to false, the text in the text field does not respond to selection commands from the mouse or keyboard, and the text cannot be copied with the Copy command. If selectable is set to true, the text in the text field can be selected with the mouse or keyboard, and the text can be copied with the Copy command. You can select text this way even if the text field is a dynamic text field instead of an input text field.

The zero-based character index value of the first character in the current selection. For example, the first character is 0, the second character is 1, and so on. If no text is selected, this property is the value of caretIndex.

The zero-based character index value of the last character in the current selection. For example, the first character is 0, the second character is 1, and so on. If no text is selected, this property is the value of caretIndex.

The sharpness of the glyph edges in this text field. This property applies only if the flash.text.AntiAliasType property of the text field is set to flash.text.AntiAliasType.ADVANCED. The range for sharpness is a number from -400 to 400. If you attempt to set sharpness to a value outside that range, Flash sets the property to the nearest value in the range (either -400 or 400).

Attaches a style sheet to the text field. For information on creating style sheets, see the StyleSheet class and the ActionScript 3.0 Developer's Guide.

You can change the style sheet associated with a text field at any time. If you change the style sheet in use, the text field is redrawn with the new style sheet. You can set the style sheet to null or undefined to remove the style sheet. If the style sheet in use is removed, the text field is redrawn without a style sheet.

Note: If the style sheet is removed, the contents of both TextField.text and TextField.htmlText change to incorporate the formatting previously applied by the style sheet. To preserve the original TextField.htmlText contents without the formatting, save the value in a variable before removing the style sheet.

Specifies whether this object is in the tab order. If this object is in the tab order, the value is true; otherwise, the value is false. By default, the value is false, except for the following:

• For a SimpleButton object, the value is true.
• For a TextField object with type = "input", the value is true.
• For a Sprite object or MovieClip object with buttonMode = true, the value is true.

Specifies the tab ordering of objects in a SWF file. The tabIndex property is -1 by default, meaning no tab index is set for the object.

If any currently displayed object in the SWF file contains a tabIndex property, automatic tab ordering is disabled, and the tab ordering is calculated from the tabIndex properties of objects in the SWF file. The custom tab ordering includes only objects that have tabIndex properties.

The tabIndex property can be a non-negative integer. The objects are ordered according to their tabIndex properties, in ascending order. An object with a tabIndex value of 1 precedes an object with a tabIndex value of 2. Do not use the same tabIndex value for multiple objects.

The custom tab ordering that the tabIndex property defines is flat. This means that no attention is paid to the hierarchical relationships of objects in the SWF file. All objects in the SWF file with tabIndex properties are placed in the tab order, and the tab order is determined by the order of the tabIndex values.

Note: To set the tab order for TLFTextField instances, cast the display object child of the TLFTextField as an InteractiveObject, then set the tabIndex property. For example:

	 InteractiveObject(tlfInstance.getChildAt(1)).tabIndex = 3;
	 

	 InteractiveObject(tlfInstance1.getChildAt(1)).tabIndex = 3;
	 InteractiveObject(tlfInstance2.getChildAt(1)).tabIndex = 2;
	 InteractiveObject(tlfInstance3.getChildAt(1)).tabIndex = 1;
	 

A string that is the current text in the text field. Lines are separated by the carriage return character ('\r', ASCII 13). This property contains unformatted text in the text field, without HTML tags.

To get the text in HTML form, use the htmlText property.

The color of the text in a text field, in hexadecimal format. The hexadecimal color system uses six digits to represent color values. Each digit has 16 possible values or characters. The characters range from 0-9 and then A-F. For example, black is 0x000000; white is 0xFFFFFF.

The height of the text in pixels.

The width of the text in pixels.

The thickness of the glyph edges in this text field. This property applies only when flash.text.AntiAliasType is set to flash.text.AntiAliasType.ADVANCED.

The range for thickness is a number from -200 to 200. If you attempt to set thickness to a value outside that range, the property is set to the nearest value in the range (either -200 or 200).

The type of the text field. Either one of the following TextFieldType constants: TextFieldType.DYNAMIC, which specifies a dynamic text field, which a user cannot edit, or TextFieldType.INPUT, which specifies an input text field, which a user can edit.

A Boolean value that indicates whether the text field has word wrap. If the value of wordWrap is true, the text field has word wrap; if the value is false, the text field does not have word wrap. The default value is false.

Appends the string specified by the newText parameter to the end of the text of the text field. This method is more efficient than an addition assignment (+=) on a text property (such as someTextField.text += moreText), particularly for a text field that contains a significant amount of content.

Parameters

Returns a rectangle that is the bounding box of the character.

Parameters

Returns the zero-based index value of the character at the point specified by the x and y parameters.

Parameters

Given a character index, returns the index of the first character in the same paragraph.

Parameters

Returns a DisplayObject reference for the given id, for an image or SWF file that has been added to an HTML-formatted text field by using an <img> tag. The <img> tag is in the following format:

   <img src = 'filename.jpg' id = 'instanceName' >

Parameters

Returns the zero-based index value of the line at the point specified by the x and y parameters.

Parameters

Returns the zero-based index value of the line containing the character specified by the charIndex parameter.

Parameters

Returns the number of characters in a specific text line.

Parameters

Returns metrics information about a given text line.

Parameters

Returns the character index of the first character in the line that the lineIndex parameter specifies.

Parameters

Returns the text of the line specified by the lineIndex parameter.

Parameters

Given a character index, returns the length of the paragraph containing the given character. The length is relative to the first character in the paragraph (as returned by getFirstCharInParagraph()), not to the character index passed in.

Parameters

Gets a style property that has been set anywhere in this component's style lookup chain.

This same method is used to get any kind of style property, so the value returned can be a Boolean, String, Number, int, uint (for an RGB color), Class (for a skin), or any kind of object. Therefore the return type is simply specified as *.

If you are getting a particular style property, you know its type and often want to store the result in a variable of that type. No casting from * to that type is necessary.

var backgroundColor:uint = getStyle("backgroundColor");

If the style property has not been set anywhere in the style lookup chain, the value returned by getStyle() is undefined. Note that undefined is a special value that is not the same as false, "", NaN, 0, or null. No valid style value is ever undefined. You can use the method IStyleManager2.isValidStyleValue() to test whether the value was set.

Parameters

Returns a TextFormat object that contains formatting information for the range of text that the beginIndex and endIndex parameters specify. Only properties that are common to the entire text specified are set in the resulting TextFormat object. Any property that is mixed, meaning that it has different values at different points in the text, has a value of null.

If you do not specify values for these parameters, this method is applied to all the text in the text field.

The following table describes three possible usages:

Parameters

Returns a UITextFormat object that contains formatting information for this component. This method is similar to the getTextFormat() method of the flash.text.TextField class, but it returns a UITextFormat object instead of a TextFormat object.

The UITextFormat class extends the TextFormat class to add the text measurement methods measureText() and measureHTMLText().

Replaces the current selection with the contents of the value parameter. The text is inserted at the position of the current selection, using the current default character format and default paragraph format. The text is not treated as HTML.

You can use the replaceSelectedText() method to insert and delete text without disrupting the character and paragraph formatting of the rest of the text.

Note: This method does not work if a style sheet is applied to the text field.

Parameters

Replaces the range of characters that the beginIndex and endIndex parameters specify with the contents of the newText parameter. As designed, the text from beginIndex to endIndex-1 is replaced.

Note: This method does not work if a style sheet is applied to the text field.

Parameters

Sets the font color of the text.

Parameters

Sets the focus to this component. The component can in turn pass focus to a subcomponent.

Note: Only the TextInput and TextArea controls show a highlight when this method sets the focus. All controls show a highlight when the user tabs to the control.

Sets as selected the text designated by the index values of the first and last characters, which are specified with the beginIndex and endIndex parameters. If the two parameter values are the same, this method sets the insertion point, as if you set the caretIndex property.

Parameters

Applies the text formatting that the format parameter specifies to the specified text in a text field. The value of format must be a TextFormat object that specifies the desired text formatting changes. Only the non-null properties of format are applied to the text field. Any property of format that is set to null is not applied. By default, all of the properties of a newly created TextFormat object are set to null.

Note: This method does not work if a style sheet is applied to the text field.

The setTextFormat() method changes the text formatting applied to a range of characters or to the entire body of text in a text field. To apply the properties of format to all text in the text field, do not specify values for beginIndex and endIndex. To apply the properties of the format to a range of text, specify values for the beginIndex and the endIndex parameters. You can use the length property to determine the index values.

The two types of formatting information in a TextFormat object are character level formatting and paragraph level formatting. Each character in a text field can have its own character formatting settings, such as font name, font size, bold, and italic.

For paragraphs, the first character of the paragraph is examined for the paragraph formatting settings for the entire paragraph. Examples of paragraph formatting settings are left margin, right margin, and indentation.

Any text inserted manually by the user, or replaced by the replaceSelectedText() method, receives the default text field formatting for new text, and not the formatting specified for the text insertion point. To set the default formatting for new text, use defaultTextFormat.

Parameters

Truncate text to make it fit horizontally in the area defined for the control, and append an ellipsis, three periods (...), to the text.

Parameters