Tips and tricks for using pixel fonts successfully

Flash:

Make sure that the text box is positioned at absolute pixel positions. Check the property inspector's x and y values and remove any numbers after the decimal point e.g. 12.3 becomes 12.

If the text box is inside a movie clip, that movie clip must also be positioned absolutely, as explained above.

You must display the movie at 100%

Either left or right align text. Centered text may be used but you must use the alias text feature in Flash.

When using the fonts in dynamic or input text fields, be sure to embed the font otherwise it won't display on all machines.

To embed regular and bold styles, make sure there is at least one character from each style in the textbox when you set the embedding.

Be careful not to modify the scale of the text box as this will cause blurring. If you do modify it inadvertently (by changing the width) then use Modify>Remove transformations to restore it to 100%.

Fireworks:

Fireworks MX has a bug which means that the tops of some of the taller characters (those taller than 8 pixels) will not display on the first line of text in a text box, but subsequent lines will. Luckily there is a workaround, simply add a stroke to the text - the bug disappears and the top of the text displays. If you don't want a stroke on your text, use an inner stroke the same colour as your text.

For multi line text adjust the leading.

Experiment with using different textured backgrounds, like dots or grids.

Photoshop:

Set anti aliassing setting.
For multi line text adjust the leading.
Experiment with using different textured backgrounds, like dots or grids.