Flash gayness, importing artwork to flash, type in flash and small type sizes

First of all with Flash gayness, (CS3) and importing paths and colour shifting.

I design the artwork in illustrator.

I import to Flash using File >Import >Import to stage. (import all bits on the stage as separate non flattened objects)

I select that the background (a square filled path) to import as a path, not a bitmap. Afterall, these are vector based programs, lets use vectors!!

So in comes my background, a very specific 'pantone matched' rbg/hex colour, and what happens??? Guess. FLASH CHANGES THE HEX COLOUR!!! It goes PINK. Seems inexplicable to me.

Yes, the colour in Illustrator is sRGB in gamut as far as I can tell (no warnings), and no its not a 'web safe' colour that 90's sort of restrictions that don't apply any more, (if anyones monitor is that shit then they can't afford the products on this website, or even an internet connection.)

So, I go into flash, select the background path box, change the hex colour value manually to what it is in illustrator. Note that if I save for web the artwork from illustrator using PNG and import it into flash, the colour is the same as my fixed hex colour.

What if I had complex artwork??? illustrations?? go through and change each colour manually? very mental.

I dont have the time or interest to google an explaination for this just making a mental note. Respec for people that are able to build amazing flash websites, theres so many caveats.

IMPORTING TEXT INTO FLASH FROM ILLUSTRATOR ARTWORK

Also not surprisingly, but good to note when planning how your going to approach importing text into flash that has very specific typographic details, that you cant import as flash text because flash text dosn't do two things, see picture of errors.

So, treat things like this as you would a logo, and eithier import as outlines (makes fatter/bolder) or as a bitmap (thinner text).

I have no idea how to get around the text not being on pixel boundaries and going blurry... I seriously am not going to letter by letter align an entire paragraph to the correct pixel boundaries.

COLOUR REMINDER

For web, always convert to SRGB

Use ICC embedded profiles when save for web for portfolios etc, where image size is not needing to be very small and accuracy is important.

Dont embed profile where the image is meant to blend with a background, eg for interface elements in your CSS, banner images etc. Otherwise image and background wont always look the same colour.

There was something else about wide gamut monitors getting oversaturated images... (with tagged srgb in non colour managed browser? - somthing to lookup when have more time. might be the other drawback for tagging images on the web)

TEXT IN FLASH / ALIASING OPTIONS

Doing text in flash, like for the dynamic text boxes etc.

Note the aliasing options, you can antialias for readability, OR, custom, and this will fatten or thin out your type, which is useful for matching the weight up with the type that is brought in as bitmaps or outlines.

ANOTHER THING ABOUT CREATING ARTWORK AND TEXT IN ILLUSTRATOR

I just read somewhere that if you are scaling up text, dont scale up outlined text, scale up the text, then convert to outlines. Something about converting to outlines removes some information. I didn't realise but in illustrator you CAN scale the text inside a group just like other objects, and it proportionally scales all the leadings etc as well.

TEXT CONVERT TO OUTLINES GOING FATTER

text gets fatter (small text) when you convert to outlines. why?

SMALL POINT SIZE TEXT IN FLASH VS BROWSER TEXT

the blurryness of small point sizes, being converted to outlines, or a bitmap, makes me wonder if browser text is actually a better choice. ?? Is it actually crisper? I read somewhere that you should turn off anti-aliasing in flash for small type sizes... hmmmm. but then again there is Windows XP, IE6 or whatever before cleartype was invented or if it is turned off. Flash is got to be looking miles better than that browser text.

FLASH PLAYER 10 - COLOUR MANAGEMENT ON THE WEB IS HERE...

But it for flash player 10 (as3)

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/10/get_better_color_through_fp10.html

If your targeting FP10 then you turn it on by

"stage.colorCorrection = ColorCorrection.ON;" in a frame script

ACTIONSCRIPTING TEXTFORMAT ETC

fuck fuck fuck. why does every little thing in flash need so much work..... my best years spent looking up how to make a text field stay italic.

http://flash-creations.com/notes/dynamic_createtext.php

I just think right now Flash is evil, it charms you with its fades and tweens, and seemingly wsiwug features, then makes you spend hours tying to do simple typography, changes your colours, etc. HTML 4eva. It is harder than designing in css for netscape 4. actually maybe not. but is hard and simple things just dont work. i want fonts to be embedded and just work, why do i have to code for it? shouldnt all this stuff be default, so the coders can go in and switch it off if they know how, rather than everyone learning how to switch it on?

i just want my dynamic text box to keep the formatting i have made on stage. i dont want to have to duplicate that formatting, and write it in actionscript for when it is replaced with new text. like i managed to code the text to italics in the frame script using tag, but the 'letterspacing' is all off which makes it look completely different. fucking hell just keep it all the way it is unless i specify otherwise, why drop half the formatting? like the text size hasnt changed, so why should the letterspacing and italics be gone...??? not logical!!!!

ANOTHER RESON TO BE WARY OF FLASH

colour profiles. as far as i can see you cant have colour profiles! except new FP10, which i cant publish to in cs3.

but right now, that means hello washed out images and photos on most mac screens, when they make everything washed out 'monitor rgb' or whatever.

thats a big deal for photographers using flash to publish a portfolio, AND their audience uses macs... it better to have images in HTML at least you get a choice to embed profile.

hello jquery and wordpress portfolios!!

UPDATE:

I think I found a good way to import illustrator artwork, from what I remember i opened the file in illustrator, copy and pasted the artwork (a logo vector EPS) from the ai into the flash stage, and that imported a good looking version (there might have been some dialogue box too...) i think, its awile ago now but i remember being surprised how crispy this looked after the trouble i had importing from last time. I havnt checked the hex colours to see if they have changed i dont care anymore.