A: For the Version 2 text effects using Actionscript 1.0 / 2.0 ( V2 components available : • PJ / • Supreme4 / • Astro / • Elite / • Pixel Font / • X-mas Mix ), you will need Macromedia/Adobe Flash MX or higher (-> MX / MX 2004 / MX 2004 professional, Flash 8 or Flash CS3 ) and Macromedia/Adobe Extension Manager to install the components.
For the Actionsript S3 packs you need Adobe Flash CS3 and Adobe Extension Manager.

A: Yes, you have 2 options

1. Use V2 versions (/ Actionscript 2) which will require you set your .fla export/publish settings always to AS2.
2. Use AS3 versions (Actionscript 3) which will require you set your .fla export/publish settings always to AS3.

obs: Currently only "PJ effects" and "Supreme4 effects" offer the 3 new tabs [Filter], [Morph] and [Out] in AS3 versions. These offer different filter usages, morphing displacement masking and different out-animations at the end of the effect. The other packs will follow in the future. The above solutions are not cross-compatible and so before you purchase you need to decide if you'll be using AS2 or AS3 scripting. On the purchase page you can see AS2 or AS3 icons to switch versions if needed.

A: You almost certainly are using a V2 trial effect in Flash CS3. Flash CS3 doesn't seem to be fond of using Actionscript 2.0 compiled clips, which the trial versions are, in AS3 .fla files and won't allow you to place them into these .fla's. Try opening / creating a AS2 .fla and try it again, that should work.

A: In many of these cases you may be doing one of the following
 • use AS3 effects in fla files set to export/publish ActionScript 2.0
 • use V2 effects in fla files set to export/publish ActionScript 3.0
Remember that the AS3 version of the text effects will only work on .fla set to export/publish AS 3.0 (so only in flash CS3) and the V2 versions which use actionscript 2.0 wil only work on movies set to export/publish 2.0.
AS3 and V2 text effect components are not cross-compatible!!! You can't use AS3 scripting in AS2 movies and vice versa!!

A: No. They are not the same product.

"ASTRO Flash Creator" is a standalone software (windows only) for quickly creating flash animations (export .swf files). ASTRO-F.C. is not for use with or within Macromedia/Adobe Flash itself (aside from loading the external .swf files you export with Astro-F.C, in movies created with MM Flash, by using the LoadMovie action (you can not import the .swf's) ). It is aimed at people in a hurry or who do not use MM Flash itself.

"ASTRO Components" are Macromedia/Adobe Flash extensions. You install them directly into the MM Flash authoring environment with MM Extension Manager. After install, you simply drag&drop the effects from the Component list onto the stage/canvas of the .fla you are working in. They will simply be part of your .fla Libarary and can be customized, edited and previewed directly in MM Flash.

A: Yes, If you have purchased PJ and Supreme4 Components Version1 and want to upgrade to Version2 or if you lost the installer file and need to redownload, you can dos so by filling out the upgrade/redownload form to request the download of the installer file.
A: Nothing. Updates are free, for upgrades like current V1 to V2 sometimes a small fee is charged. In this case, V2 upgrade is free, a small token of appreciation to loyal customers.

First make sure you have the latest version of MM Extension Manager, check / download and install from the Macromedia/Adobe website.

A1: If you have more then one version of Flash, you will need to select the version of Flash in Extension Manager in which you want to use the effects, and install it again. See Installing the components

A2: If you have a non-English version of Flash, make sure that the component installer has installed the .fla files (PJ effects.fla and/or Supreme 4 effects.fla) in the correct program folder. If you have for example a French version of Flash, the .fla files will need to have been installed in the "fr" program folder, copy/cut them if necessary from the "en" program folder.

A3: If you are trying to install Version2 update over Version1, remove the existing version 1 (deactivate it in ALL flash versions in MM Extension manager and then remove it, if necessary in ALL)

A: Do two things. The first is to make the Component Panel floating by dragging it loose and resizing (increasing) the panel to show all effects ( show me ) . The second is to click the drop-down menu on the right-top of the Panel and deselect "Show Description", then the effects will only show icons with the first letters of the effect name ( show me ).

A: You can not export to Flash 4 or 5, you can only export or publish to Flash 6, 7 or 8. This is because the effects use textfield 'Instance Names', a feature of Flash MX and higher.

A: For more information about previewing effects before selecting one in your movie, check out the "Demos" page. Once you have placed an effect in your movie, you can preview the effect and its variations in the Custom UI tab "Preview".

A: For PJ/Supreme4/Astro/Elite Components-Technically most effects can be adjusted to be used with pixel fonts. All effects font instance in Movie Clip "letter" and optionally "letterX" (where X is some number) must be placed at top-left (!) position 0-0 or at least non-comma values. The component instance on stage must also be placed at a center-middle (!) position of non-comma values. Use the Flash Info panel to set positions and select the appropriate align-setting. Read also some extra info about using pixelfonts.

For Flash MX 2004 and Flash 8 users, a simple alternative to using pixelfonts is setting the "Font Rendering Method" to [Bitmap text (no anti-alias)] in the Property Panel.

For Pixel Font Components - These effects have been specifically optimized. Make sure you
• have set the font in MovieClip "letter" to a pixelfont of your choice
• have set the appropriate font size fo that pixelfont (or a multiple of it) , see its documentation
• have not rescaled or rotated the component effect or any of its _parent(s)

A: Almost all of the visual result has been kept the same. Structually there are a few changes. The important ones for users are these;

1. All script per effect is performed in 1 single script frame instead of spread over a number of keyframes. This may make it more difficult for users to make custom modifications but offers a better structure.
2. For multiple fonts per effect you won't use 1 single "letter" MovieClip with multiple keyframes (one for each font type) like you do in the V2 effects, but one MovieClip for each font type per effect.
   Go to the AS3 HELP section "Live Demo" for more info
3. Aside from the option to Eval() your typed text as a somewhere defined variable(dynamic text), you can now also choose to have it use a value from a predfined Array ("externaltext" to be defined in root)
   Go to the AS3 HELP section"Live Demo" for more info

A: Use a dot value for the component parameter "Delay between letters", try for example 0.5 to make it generate letters twice as fast

A: In general I would advice using a "INVISIBLE BUTTON"... How does that work?
Create a button with Insert - New Symbol, select "button" as behavior and give it a Name like "inv button". Now open "inv button" and in the timeline select the 4th frame ('Hit'-frame). Insert a blank keyframe. On stage, draw a rectangle of 100x100 pixels and place its center on point x-y 0-0.
Go back to the timeline where your text effect is placed and estimate at which frame the effect should be clickable. Create a new layer on top op the text effect and create a blank keyframe at the frame you estimated. Drag an instance of "inv button" on stage at this frame. Rescale it to about or exactly the size of the text in the text effect and position the button to cover the area where the text will appear. In the action panel, add the appropriate action to the button (like e.g. getUrl to open a website page). Since the button only has contents in the hit frame, it will not show visibly but will still work as button. Now you can reuse this button every time you need to make an effect text clickable.

A: Put all effects in a separate layer and create separate keyframes to place them in after an interval of X frames. For example -> Put text/effect 1 on keyframe 1 of layer1, put text/effect 2 on keyframe (e.g.) 50 of layer2, put text/effect 3 on keyframe (e.g.) 100 of layer3 and so on. ( show me )

For automated rotation of effects (sequentially), models are available for when ending one effect it automatically triggers the next one to start playing. This requires some minor quick custom modifications in source.

A: When you drag an effect on stage, you will see a positioner-clip. The middle-left point of this clip is the base x-y 0-0 position and generally more or less the left-middle endpoint of the first letter. In other words, normally it will be the final letter X and Y position -> point 0,0. Basically it represents the LEFT-TOP of the text-block. When you align right or middle and using multiple lines of text, the positioner will represent the left-top of the virtual square surrounding your text, so it might not literally represent the final first letter position anymore. When activating the "Fixed X/Y Center" option in the Parameter Panel, then the horizontal and vertical position of the effect placed on canvas can be ignored, since they will be overridden with the values in the Parameter Panel

A: See Changing fonts AS2 or Changing fonts AS3

A: See Using multiple fonts AS2 or Using multiple fonts AS3

Flash MX - By default a component "String" parameter is a single line. If you drag the Component Panel/Inspector loose so that it becomes a floating panel, it accepts multiline. See screenshot on how to do this. Unfortunately it is a Macromedia/Adobe Flash issue which I haven't found any way to circumvent yet.

Flash 8 - In Flash 8 there seems to be a bug not allowing Enter for next line in textfields in a Custom UI .swf. A simple solution is typing your multiline text anywhere else (e.g. notepad or word), copy it and then right-click "paste" it in the textfield.

Also, in any case of trouble putting multiple lines in the text effect, type your text in notepad or other text editor and copy the multiline text, then right-click 'paste' the text into the parameter panel text field.

A: The effect letter is by default set to ranges Uppercase [A..Z], Lowercase [a..z], Numerals [0..9] and Punctuation ["!@#%...] If you need to use other characters, open the "letter" instance from the "effect clips" (where effect is the name of the effect you are using) folder in the Library. Select the letter textfield instance on stage, in the Properties panel click 'Character' and in the field "All/Include these characters" type the characters you need the effect to display.

see also LIVEDEMO (show me) Adding special characters (ôÇãéÌ etc) *

IMPORTANT! REPEAT STEPS! Some effects use an extra "letterX" (for example "letter2", "letter3" or "letter5" etc) Movie Clip. You'll need to repeat any changes/procedures to "letter" also on the "letterX" Movie Clip in text effects;

(letter2) PJ bevel BW
(letter2) PJ bevel WB
(letter2) PJ explode
(letter2) PJ implode
(letter2) PJ raindrops
(letter2) PJ shadow
(letter5) PJ startrek
(letter2) PJ water
(letter5) S4 fireworks
(letter10) S4 fireworks tweened
(letter2) S4 glassball
(letter2) S4 magnifying glass
(letter2) S4 parts
(letter2) S4 pieces
(letter2) S4 superbevel
(letter3*) S4 waterdrops
(letter2) ASTRO - Diversen - Breeze
(letter2) ASTRO - Diversen - Blast

NOTICE: For "letterX" ( X is a number as in "letter2" , "letter3") etc the X number indicates the treelevel of the MC in regards to MC "effect". Take "letter" as basic 1, meaning 1 tree-level down, "letter2" is one tree level deeper then "letter", meaning "letter2" is 2 tree-levels down. This is useful info if you need to do custom modifications in the "letterX" MC scripting.

A: You can use text which has been defined as variable. Activate the "Use Dynamic Input" in the custom UI and instead of the text type the name (and correct tree-level) of the variable you want to call as to-be-shown-text. This way you can assign any text which has been set by means of actionscript (defined as a variable value) as the to be displayed text for a component. If you read in variables through xml, asp, php, javascript, from .txt file or other ways, these can be used as text for the components.

Example: Define in first frame of main timeline myVar = "hello world"; Now place any effect on stage and in the textfield modify This is a dummy text. to _parent.myVar and activate the "Use Dynamic Input" checkbox.. test your movie and it should show "hello world" as effect text.

NOTICE: Preview in Parameter Panel will not work anymore when using "Use Dynamic Input" since it is not possible to extract the content while in runtime authoring environment.

A: See How the Override-tab works

A: You have an older version, use contact form to request an updated version

A: The custom UI is a .swf file. It can not be changed from within the Flash Authoring Environment. By default only the font "Arial" is used in the effect preview, this to keep startup loading duration of Flash to the minimum. Since there are thousand of fonts available, it is impossible to include them all in every custom UI. So any font-changes you have defined manually, will not reflect in the Preview-Tab.

A: Don't use Ctr-V to paste, use right-mouse "Paste" the text into the Component parameter panel instead

A: To be allowed to remove the "assets" layer, then for any of the placed objects in that keyframe 2 you need to select Linkage "Export in first frame". That always goes for the effects MovieClip [effect] and Movieclip [letter 1] which you find in the effect "$clips" folder. And you'll have to do the same for any extra objects you find in the "$clips" folder or any duplicate letter MCs you created.

A: You can use addChild or addChildAt to place effects randomly while playback. To make the flash movie allow that, every effect needs an extra layer with default parameters defined. If you need to do this, contact me for the effects extra layer you require.

A: Of course. If you're a flash expert, most likely you have tried and done so already. If you don't feel comfortable in messing around in them, contact me describing what you would like to do. Next I will either explain in steps what to do, or if it's easily done. send a variation/copy of it directly by email. All requests will be handled if they are technically possible and as spare time allows.

A: This is because they are all "old" examples. Along the way of developing component customization, I also improved wherever I found it possible and adjusted slightly some default settings. This also might give a clue to whoever has the question "I tried (st)ripping the examples code with a SWF Decompiler, why does that not work?" ;-)

A: Basically the component is set to use "Arial" on default, but the MXP wrapper seems to reset the text field embed choices back to blank. You can quickly resolve this by opening in the Library the text effects movieclip "letter 1" (or other number if you created more font MCs for the same text effect), selec the textfield on stage and then in the Properties Panel click the [Embed] CS3/CS5 / [Character Embedding] CS4 and select those glyphs which it will need to use in the animation.