Alignment affects all the text in the text box. Just like your word processor, Animate lets you align text right, center, or left. The order of options and their accompanying numbers give you hints for comparing the different weights. Gives you several options such as Thin, Extra Light, Normal, and Extra Bold. Slants the text so it looks like italics.

Percentage is a useful option when designing web content that may be viewed on mobile devices as well as desktop computers. Most web browsers give users the ability to adjust the size of text, so an em is a unit that changes according to the browser setting. An em is roughly the size of the letter M. Pixels are equivalent to a single dot on a monitor. Animate uses three different units for specifying font size: pixels ( px) ems ( em) and percentage ( %). Click this to change the method for specifying font-size. Next to font-size you see a button called Text Property Unit.

Click the swatch, and the standard color picker appears where you can set the color for your text. For more details on fonts and typefaces, see the next section. In web design, you’re limited to fonts that are available to your audience unless you have a way of providing the font with your project. You might not find all the same fonts that you have on your computer. You can choose from several different typefaces. One significant advantage to this method is that links within the text are maintained. In essence, it’s just another graphic element you can use in an animation. You can’t edit it or change its formatting. You’re limited in what you can do with text imported in this way. You can open that page in Animate using File➝ Open and then use Animate to make the elements move. You’d like to add some animation excitement to the static page. Perhaps you have a web page already created in an HTML editor or some other web-building tool. This process maintains some of the major formatting, such as paragraph breaks. It won’t be formatted exactly as it was originally, but the text will be there. In that case, you can copy the text in your word processor, and then in Animate create a text box and press Ctrl+V (Command-V) to paste it into your project. If you’re working with large blocks of text, you may have already worked up a draft in a word processor or some other source. When you’re done, you can close the text window by pressing Esc or clicking the X button in the upper-right corner. If you want to create multiple paragraphs, just press Enter (Return) as you would in your word processor. Try the phrase “ON the EDGE.” The text you enter appears on the stage, as shown in Figure 1. Initially, you don’t have to worry too much about positioning or sizing the text box.

In the Tools palette, click the big T (or use the shortcut key T), and then in your document, click and drag to create a text box. There are three ways to add text to your Animate project:

Word toolbar disappears when typing