User Guide

Using HTML-formatted text 243
Embedding movie clip symbols
To embed a movie clip symbol in a text field, you specify the symbol’s linkage identifier for the
<img> tag’s src attribute. (For information on defining a linkage identifier, see “Attaching a
movie clip symbol to the Stage” on page 212.)
For example, the following code inserts a movie clip symbol with the linkage identifier
symbol_ID into a dynamic text field with the instance name textField_txt.
textField_txt.htmlText = "<p>Here’s a movie clip symbol:<img
src='symbol_ID'>";
In order for an embedded movie clip to display properly and completely, the registration point for
its symbol should be at point (0,0).
Specifying height and width values
If you specify
width and height attributes for an <img> tag, space is reserved in the text field for
the JPEG file, SWF file, or movie clip. After a JPEG or SWF file has downloaded completely, it
appears in the reserved space. Flash scales the media up or down, according to the
height and
width values. You must enter both height and width attributes to scale the image.
If you don’t specify
height and width values, no space is reserved for the embedded media. After
a JPEG or SWF file has downloaded completely, Flash inserts it into the text field at full size and
rebreaks text around it.
Note: If you are dynamically loading your images into a text field containing text, it is good practice to
specify the width and height of the original image so the text properly wraps around the space you
reserve for your image.
Controlling embedded media with ActionScript
Flash Player creates a new movie clip for each
<img> tag and embeds that movie clip within the
TextField object. The
<img> tag’s id attribute lets you assign an instance name to the movie clip
that is created. This lets you control that movie clip with ActionScript.
The movie clip created by Flash Player is added as a child movie clip to the text field that contains
the image.
For example, the following code embeds a SWF file named animation.swf in the text field named
textField_txt on level 0 and assigns the instance name animation_mc to the movie clip that
contains the SWF file:
_level0.textField_txt.htmlText = "Here’s an interesting animation: <img
src='animation.swf' id='animation_mc'>";
In this case, the fully qualified path to the newly created movie clip is
_level0.textField_txt.animation_mc. For example, you could place the following code after
the previous code (on the same Timeline as
textField_txt) for a button called stop_btn that
stops the playhead of the embedded SWF file:
stop_btn.onRelease = function() {
_level0.textField_txt.animation_mc.stop();
};