ComboBox text formatting in AS3
After struggling with it for a while, I’ve finally found the way to set embedFonts and a specific textFormat for all text in a Flash CS3 ComboBox component.
First of all, it is wise to create a subclass of fl.controls.ComboBox to represent your custom comboBox. In this class you can then set some styles in the constructor as follows:
package com.rockabit.utils.as3
{
import fl.controls.ComboBox;
import fl.controls.List;import flash.text.TextFormat;
/**
* Customized ComboBox component. Graphic changes have been made inside the component itself,
* in the library, changes in textual display are made here.
*/
public class CustomComboBox extends ComboBox
{
private var textFormat:TextFormat;public function CustomComboBox()
{
super();textFormat = new TextFormat(”Arial”, 10, 0xffffff);
//textField is the top text, in the closed combobox
textField.setStyle(”embedFonts”, true);
textField.setStyle(”textFormat”, textFormat);//dropdown is the list that shows when you open the combobox
dropdown.setStyle(”cellRenderer”, CustomCellRenderer);
}override protected function drawLayout():void
{
super.drawLayout();
textField.y = 0;
}
}
}
So in the constructor, I create a TextFormat instance and assign that to the textField variable. I then set the cellRenderer style of the dropdown list, which is a class that describes how each item in the list is formatted. For that I use another custom class, which extends fl.controls.listClasses.CellRenderer:
package com.rockabit.utils.as3
{
import fl.controls.listClasses.CellRenderer;import flash.text.TextFormat;
/**
* Custom cellRenderer for comboBox list items.
*/
public class CustomCellRenderer extends CellRenderer
{public function CustomCellRenderer()
{
super();
this.setStyle(”embedFonts”, true);
this.setStyle(”textFormat”, new TextFormat(”Arial”, 10, 0×000000));
}}
}
All this class does is extend the default CellRenderer class and set some styles in the constructor.
Using these two simple classes, you can easily make sure that all your fonts are embedded in the comboBox component, and give them custom text formatting.
I’ve made a small example .fla file. You’ll notice that I added the Tahoma font to the library with a linkage class, which I instantiate in the TextFormat constructor parameter to get the correct fontName. Because I set the library font to bitmap text andset embedFonts to true in code, you get a nice crisp font display in your combobox.
Edit: I have now also added functionality to the CustomComboBox class to set vertical positioning of the main textfield. Right now this is hardcoded, but that could be changed to listen to a custom style.
Download source:
http://www.rockabit.com/downloads/as3/combobox_example.zip