text rendering w/ flex/flash [modified]

[Force Code]

C++ programmer exclusively. Have not done any web development at all. From what I've read today, Flex is THE way to go for client side UI development. I downloaded the Flex SDK, and it looks like there's nothing equivalent to a GDI+ TextureBrush, at least not for text. In Flex, it looks like all you can do with text is change the color, not render it with some arbitrary bitmap as a texture. (There are skins, but not for text). Is that the case? Anything equivalent to Flex in terms of comprehensiveness, portability and ease of use that *does* have this capability?

[Guffa]

Force Code wrote:

From what I've read today, Flex is THE way to go for client side UI development.

That depends entirely on what the UI should do. I believe that in the foreseeable future most web pages will still be just plain web pages.

Force Code wrote:

I downloaded the Flex SDK, and it looks like there's nothing equivalent to a GDI+ TextureBrush, at least not for text. In Flex, it looks like all you can do with text is change the color, not render it with some arbitrary bitmap as a texture. (There are skins, but not for text). Is that the case?

Flex is limited by the capabilitles of the Flash player, so it's possible you can't do it that way. It's possible to accompish the same effect in flash by using a text layer as mask to reveal a bitmap in the underlying layer. That should be possible to do in Flex also.

Force Code wrote:

Anything equivalent to Flex in terms of comprehensiveness, portability and ease of use that *does* have this capability?

You might want to take a look at Micorsoft's "flashkiller" Silverlight. I don't know if it's better for exactly what you are doing, but it sure doesn't hurt to know a little bit about it.

--- single minded; short sighted; long gone;

[Force Code]

Guffa wrote:

It's possible to accompish the same effect in flash by using a text layer as mask to reveal a bitmap in the underlying layer. That should be possible to do in Flex also.

Thanks, I'll look into this.