Why does text disappear in Flash?

I thought I should cover this issue on this article, as we’ve had a lot of clients who happened to write back complaining of missing text. To start with, you should know – the client is the issue, not the missing text. :)

Before you decide to write me back and argue on that, please give me a chance to explain myself.

Let’s say client A comes to you and asks for a Flash Mp3 Player, a Flash Video Gallery, a Flash Template and some other flash components. You build the files, and send them to the client. After a while, you receive an email in which the client complains that the text inside the Flash Mp3 Player doesn’t display anymore. Well, you start asking about the XML content, tell them to validate it, tell them to check if the content is written in the appropriate place, even tell them to check the path of the XML. Let me tell you the first question to ask is: “Did you make any changes to the file?”

80% of the clients that we ask the question, who have this problem, say YES. And here’s where the problem comes from! :)

To clients: a swf file is a collection of assets a Flash Developer puts together, and it includes code, design elements from Illustrator, Photoshop or other software, embeded fonts, sometimes audio and video files, and so on. If you decide you want to move a shape couple of pixels down, do not ( and I repeat DO NOT ) do so, unless you have the fonts used in the Flash files installed on the machine you use. Most probably the developer has embedded some fonts in the swf so that all the users can see the swf file in the same manner. By opening the file and making changes to it, the fonts that you do not have installed will usually be replaced with device fonts, and won’t display in the new published swf file.

We strongly encourage you to contact the developer of your Flash file and kindly ask them to provide you all the assets he/she used for creating your flash component. After you install the fonts, you can safely open the FLA file and check the code, or other things you might be interested it. Hope this helps!

To prevent this from happening, you should always make sure the developer also provides the fonts used to create a swf file. Otherwise you will have an unusable Flash file, which no developer will be able to modify without the appropriate fonts. You won’t get the same swf file, and a new developer would need to modify all textfields with a new font if he doesn’t have the original fonts from you.

Please let us know on the comments below if this has happened to you, and how did you helped your clients understand why the issue occurred.