Participating Frequently

Answered

Align text in vertical center of text box on mac

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
July 12, 2009
18 replies
27869 views

I am having a problem with my text alignment and I can't figure out a way to correct this. Unfortunately, I'm using a mac with CS3 and a Windows computer with CS4, so it could either be an OS difference, a version difference, or a software bug which I can't figure out.

Update: I downloaded a trial CS4 and the problem persists. This seems to be a mac issue.

For some reason, the text on my Mac with CS3 are not in the vertical center of the text fields. This causes a problem with my "align vertical centers" alignments, meaning I've had to do the alignment by hand to get it to look right. When I moved my file to my laptop to keep working on my project at home, I noticed that the text alignment was correct on my laptop, causing all of the text placement throughout my document to be off. This means that I can only work on the one computer and can't bring the project home to work through the weekends.

I have made an image showing the difference of how the text is aligned on the two versions, and a sample of how it affects my project when i bring it between computers.

I made the file on the mac (CS3) first, and so the alignment is designed to look correct on there. When i bring it to the PC (CS4) the text shifts down, placing it back in the center of the text boxes and ruining the alignment.

When I publish the file it keeps the formatting of each system. IE - publishing on the mac makes the final product look like it does on the mac, and publishing on the windows computer makes it look like it looks on the windows computer. The file published from the mac has the mac alignment on both computers, and the file published from the pc has the alignment of the pc on both computers.

Just to clarify, the way flash handles text fields on windows / cs4 is how I imagine it should be. I made the file on mac/CS3 however, and so when i said "ruins the alignment" I should have said "fixes the alignment problem, but breaks my alignment which was made to compensate for the problem I was experiencing."

I hope that someone will be able to help me with this issue, and thank you in advance for your feedback!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer OMA2k

For people still suffering this problem, you can use this to convert text fields placement from Windows to Mac and vice-versa:

GitHub - TheGood/ShiftTextFields: Allows all TextField instances within a FLA to be shifted along the X or Y axis by N p…

vtx123

Participant

I'm cry...
Animate CC 2015.2 has a same problem.

O

OMA2kCorrect answer

Inspiring

For people still suffering this problem, you can use this to convert text fields placement from Windows to Mac and vice-versa:

GitHub - TheGood/ShiftTextFields: Allows all TextField instances within a FLA to be shifted along the X or Y axis by N p…

D

dr deetee

Participant

Sigh.

Bumping this thread in the vain hope that Adobe will fix this. It's only been 4 years.

JoseOJ

Adobe Employee

Hi

Could you please share the files to isolate this issue.

I think this issue is reproducible in CS3 and CS4.

Please confirm if any body having the same issue in CS 6.

D

dr deetee

Participant

Hi Catherine,

Thanks for following up on this. I'm still seeing this issue on Flash CC (13.0.1.808).

I have created a FLA which shows the problem. I created it on a Mac and sized all Textfields to match exactly the size of the red box behind them. Then I opened the same FLA in Windows. All the heights of the Textfields have changed! They all have random heights and the vertical alignment is different.

I tried embedding the fonts. I tried static and dynamic text fields. But these don't affect the issue.

I have attached screenshots of what we see on Mac and Windows.

Created on a Mac:

And then opened on Windows:

The FLA is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxpflqy4flbaxwf/font%20align%20issue.fla

Note: I also reported this bug to Adobe. I received a response from O. J. Jose.

David

I discovered that this bug only affects OTF fonts. All TTF fonts seem ok. I think smcaulif said as much above.

So you should be ok if you convert all OTFs to TTF. This website seems to work well: http://www.freefontconverter.com/

David

A

Anonymous

Just helping to keep this thread and issue alive. Amazing that Adobe hasn't addressed this issue yet. What I find particually frustrating isn't as much the cross-platform font alignment issues but the inability to align text properly at all in Flash. For instance I'm making many, many buttons for an interactive CD, the client likes the text inside of rectangular box centered - I can't center the text vertically due to this text field vertical alignment bug. I have to go in and manually adjust them everytime, total pain. Why they can't fix something like this is a total mystery to me. (using CS 5)

T

The-Good

Participant

We posted a fix a couple years ago, but we've since moved the code to our githup repo https://github.com/TheGood/ShiftTextFields enjoy!

notusednickname

Participant

OMG !!!!!
I can't believe that this still exists!!!!!

@ADOBE, please @!@!@!@!???

CS6 and this still happenes.

A

acnyc

Participant

Just chiming in to say this is still a problem. Glad this thread exists. Hopefully if it ever gets cleared up they'll let us know in here.

Until then I guess I get to buy a 2nd computer just so I can publish certain PC FLAs at home. yippee.

S

smcaulif

Participating Frequently

The only thing I can think is that they just don't care that much about the Flash IDE anymore - they're nursing it along, but their focus is on Flex, Catalyst, Builder, etc. Which I get, but this seems like it could be fixed since it doesn't happen in any other Adobe app (that I'm aware of).

One thing I'll pass along - if you use Windows TrueType fonts, they will run on both Mac and Windows boxes and not give you a problem. It's just hard to find them these days. Recently we switched from Myriad Pro OTF to Frutiger Windows TrueType and were able maintain the overall look and not have this issue. It's a lot of work just to get Flash to behave!

S

smcaulif

Participating Frequently

I was wrong about using WIndows TrueType - it does solve this specific issue but there's a whole other issue - the line-height is interpreted differently on PC and MAC! Kill me!!!!

A

AnthonyFitz2

Participant

Took me a while to find this post, but I too have this same issue!

I'm new to flash and just started to work on it recently when I came across this text layout problem. We work on a lot of different FLAs from different companies so they can be developed on Mac or PC.

After reading this post its clear to me that Flash FLA files are NOT Platform independent. I thought it was just me, or my machine or font setup, but now I know its a Flash Mac Bug, so I don't have to waste my time trying to figure out a solution.

Now I know I must have 2 PCs with Windows and Mac. both with Flash, and I have to make sure I know which platform the FLA was developed on.

Thanks guys for clearing this up and saving me hours and hours of research to solve an unsolveable Bug in the Mac Flash Software!

By the way, still not fixed in CS5.5 either!

To help other people with their searches I am mentioning the following words again, Flash, Bug, Text Layout Bug, Mac and PC cross platform bug, fail, text layout issues, text alignment with Mac and PC using Flash. Hopefully it might help other people in their searches ;-)

Cheers,

Anthony.

S

smcaulif

Participating Frequently

This issue should not be brushed off as minor, or simply the usual cross-platform oddity. This issue is specific to Flash. It also is specific to certain fonts. I have found it only happens with Adobe fonts - but I haven't tested that enough to assert that it's Adobe's fonts vs. OTF/TTF fonts in general.

To replicate:

Open Flash CS4 or CS3 in both Windows and Leopard (if you have that ability). Make a new Flash file in WIndows and create text using Myriad Pro or Adobe Caslon Pro (those are the 2 I've tested). Make a guide that shows where the baseline of the font is. Save and then open this file in Flash on Mac - you'll see the shift right away. The font "field" itself is the same, but the position of the text relative to the box it's in is different.

If you do the same basic test in Photoshop there is no problem. That's the only other adobe app I've tested but I've read enough to say comfortably this is basically a Flash bug.

And it's a big one in my opinion. My team is currently taking a huge hit in productivity because of this.

PS - If we had realized this up front, we would have chosen fonts that don't have this issue (they exist). But it seems that this issue has been ignored or considered unimportant, and so not many people are aware until it kills their workflow.

--Sean McAuliffe

T

The-Good

Participant

We've made a fix http://www.thegood.com/#/social/index.php/blog/flash-textfield-baseline-shift-issue-fix/

S

Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

That's helpful, thegoodgroup, but it would be much better if there was a real fix for this! having to run a script fixes the issue if you go across platform one time, but going back and forth it's a pain to have to do all the time. Thank you for taking the time to put that together.

W

walmommy

Participant

I found this thread while searching for help on a similar (or the same?) problem. I am using CS4 at school on Windows and at home on a Mac. I brought my Flash files home to work on them over the weekend. As someone noted already, if a swf is made on the machine that created the file, it looks like the original Flash file, and the swf works fine on either platform. If I open the Flash file on my Mac, the text is raised up several pixels and the height of the text box is actually 4 pixels less than on the PC. Even if I save the Mac Flash file and take it in to school, the instructor can't troubleshoot this, as it reverts back to the original PC layout for the text box. In some cases this doesn't make much difference, but inside of buttons where the alignment of the up, over, and down states are critical, this is a deal-breaker. When I finish the school program shortly, I will not be able to maintain my websites without having to completely re-align the type everywhere, including inside all buttons and symbols. I have checked the details in the property inspector, and the height of the box is the only data that changes. This really does make Flash unusable for cross platform work.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

F

Funnyvoyage

Participating Frequently

Thanks for your imformative tips. They are all helpful.

N

neurowave

Participant

Smef, you're not alone! This has been the biggest issue I've had with Flash for many years (I've been using it since Flash 4). I am absolutely baffled as to why it hasn't been fixed yet.

N

neurowave

Participant

Btw, there used to be a script someone wrote that would automatically shift all the textfields in an FLA by a certain amount. I can't seem to find the link anymore, but it wasnt a very good fix anyway as the shift isn't consistent. It seems to be based on the size the textfield is set to. Doing it manually is the only way to get it right, or just make sure the machine you initially designed it on will always be the machine you use to compile the SWF. It sucks, but these seem to be the only options till it gets fixed (if ever).

S

Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

It sounds like this has been a problem for quite a while, which is a bummer. I wonder if this is really a bug with the software or a limitation of the OS, for some reason.

N

NinaBos

Participant

I agree with you, it's not really good enough to say "oh well, it's just the way it is" especially since a large percentage of Adobe's market use Macs and it is pretty common to work across platforms. I've had to redo all my templates in my current project (originally done on a PC) to fix this bug, which took up a lot of hours.

Have you tried 'reporting a bug' on Adobe's contact page?

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

They might not know/care about it.

Good luck

Show more replies

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded