Question

The initial height of a text area is much larger than the content, I cannot find a way of making it always the same height as the text content:

<mx:TextArea id="textarea" borderStyle="solid" width="100%" wordWrap="true" selectable="false" backgroundAlpha="0" focusAlpha="0" text="this is a little test" />

Gives a bordered box that is much taller than needed.

This also gives an unintential problem if you have links within the content in that a link ‘mouseover’ is triggered when nowhere near the link.

<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
public function onInit():void
{
    var style:StyleSheet = new StyleSheet();

    var aLink:Object = new Object();
    aLink.color = "#0000FF";

    var aHover:Object = new Object();
    aHover.color = "#00FF00";
    aHover.textDecoration = "underline";

    style.setStyle( "a:hover", aHover );
    style.setStyle( "a:link", aLink );

    textarea.styleSheet = style;
}
]]>
</mx:Script>


<mx:TextArea id="textarea" width="100%" wordWrap="true" borderStyle="solid" selectable="false" backgroundAlpha="0" focusAlpha="0" >
    <mx:htmlText>
    <![CDATA[<a href='event:http://www.adobe.com'>Navigate to Adobe.com.</a> this is testing nothing at all really]]>
    </mx:htmlText>
</mx:TextArea>

The Text component doesnt suffer from this, but I cannot attach a stylesheet to a text component.

Hoping someone can help. Or is there some other component I can use where I can add a stylesheet to stylise anchor tags.

I found this overridable in the TextArea.as source and if I override it and remove the “2 x” multiplier it almost works but unfortunately it means that the content doesnt get bigger when it needs to and vertically scrolls instead, so its almost there:

override protected function measure():void
{
    super.measure();

    measuredMinWidth = DEFAULT_MEASURED_MIN_WIDTH;
    measuredWidth = DEFAULT_MEASURED_WIDTH;
    // TextArea is minimum of two lines of text
    measuredMinHeight = measuredHeight = 2 * DEFAULT_MEASURED_MIN_HEIGHT;
}

Answer 1

If you extend Text, you can add a getter/setter that allows you to set the styleSheet of the underlying UITextField object.

package
{
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.text.StyleSheet;

    import mx.controls.Text;

    import mx.core.mx_internal;

    use namespace mx_internal;

    public class StyledText extends Text
    {
        public function StyledText()
        {
            super();
        }

        private var _styleSheet:StyleSheet = null;

        [Bindable("stylesheetChanged")]
        public function get styleSheet():StyleSheet {
            return _styleSheet;
        }

        public function set styleSheet(value:StyleSheet):void {
            _styleSheet = value;

            if ( textField ) {
                textField.styleSheet = _styleSheet;
            }

            dispatchEvent(new Event("stylesheetChanged"));
        }

        override protected function createChildren():void {
            super.createChildren();

            //textField is created in the createChildren 
            //method of the Label class
            if ( textField && styleSheet ) {
                textField.styleSheet = _styleSheet;
            }
        }

    }
}

Then you can use the component like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" xmlns:ns1="*" preinitialize="onInit()">
    <mx:Script>
    <![CDATA[
    public function onInit():void
    {
        var style:StyleSheet = new StyleSheet();

        var aLink:Object = new Object();
        aLink.color = "#0000FF";

        var aHover:Object = new Object();
        aHover.color = "#00FF00";
        aHover.textDecoration = "underline";

        style.setStyle( "a:hover", aHover );
        style.setStyle( "a:link", aLink );

        text.styleSheet = style;
    }
    ]]>
    </mx:Script>


    <ns1:StyledText id="text" x="0" y="79">
        <ns1:htmlText>
        <![CDATA[<a href='event:http://www.adobe.com'>Navigate to Adobe.com.</a> this is testing nothing at all really]]>
        </ns1:htmlText>
    </ns1:StyledText>

</mx:Application>