Fonts are the creative content of the font designer or foundry, so if you don't have a collection of fonts you've paid for, and aren't planning on purchasing some, you should stick to free fonts. A good place to start is Google, you'll find plenty of foundries who make a few free fonts, and several sites like [http://www.fonts.com/]. You may choose to embed a particular font that came with your operating system for the sake of cross-platform uniformity as well, however you still need to make sure that it is either an OTF (Open Type Font) or TTF (True Type Font), as Flex works with these file types. There are ways to convert postscript and other font formats to OTF/TTF but it's tedious and you're better off finding a different compatible font You can also load fonts as an external resource in your apps similar to just calling a system font, however embedding them is the way to go. Embedded fonts can be anti-aliased, take part in effects, and are handled as a true asset and thus with a higher regard in your application. There are a number of ways to embed fonts in your Flex applications. If you're embedding a font that's active in your system you can specify the system name as in the following example:

@font-face {
src: local("Arial");
fontFamily: MyFont;
}

Likely however you'll not want to keep a whole bunch of fonts active or have to think about activating your project fonts every time you compile, in which case you can copy the font file to your project directory. In the example below the Arial font is in a 'fonts' sub-directory of my project:

@font-face {
src: url("/fonts/Arial.ttf");
fontFamily: MyFont;
}

Note: If you use spaces in the font family as in "My Font" you'll run into an issue where the font appears in Design View but isn't compiled with the app. There are other options that can be specified to customize your font-face:

fontStyle: normal | italic | oblique;
fontWeight: normal | bold | heavy;
advancedAntiAliasing: true | false;

These style declarations are placed within the mxml <mx:Style> tag. The above code uses CSS, which is best for styling and skinning your application, but if you prefer you can do the same thing in actionscript. For more information on how to, and why you should/shouldn't embed a font in your applications refer to [http://livedocs.adobe.com...fonts_09.html] Keep in mind that font files can be quite large, in the 5-12MB+ range and that size will be added to the weight of your application. It's best to use lighter fonts when creating online apps, in which case try to find one's under 200KB.

Since this is my first post about computer programming I feel like I should start with the basics. There are many different combinations of servers, databases, languages and frameworks that can essentially accomplish the same thing, in sometimes different ways, usually with more or less features and benefits. Let's start with html. Html is the skeleton, it's responsible for the structure of a web page. Most programmers these days use a form of html called xhtml, which adds the clean orderly feel of xml form, it's more standards compliant and eliminates a lot of errors associated with cross-browser development. You then have css, which styles the html. css is responsible for the layout visually; presentation. These two languages are all you need to create a static page. Now when you get into sites that deliver changing content like blogs, message boards, or online stores, information needs to be dynamically pulled from a database. One of the most versatile and open source databases out there is mysql. In order to communicate with the database a language called php is used. Php is really what makes dynamic sites dynamic. An extremely versatile language used on both small scale; communicating with databases, conditional statements, variables, and functions inter-spliced into web sites, to full scale object oriented programming used in heavy online applications. Finally there's Javascript, a seriously under used and overlooked language that's been around for a long time but only gained popularity in the last few years as the XMLHttpRequest began receiving attention. Javascript is the layer that brings a web page to life, it lets you interact with the html and css of a page without having to reload the page. Ajax, is the name given to the use of the XMLHttpRequest in javascript and it's surrounding functions and effects. It allows a user to interact with the server, like getting information from a database—usually done by communicating with external server-side php files that serve as a go between the javascript and the database, adding a refreshing level of interaction to web sites and applications. A web site is really a set of instructions. All the languages and code don't actually do anything until someone opens their browser and points to a web page thus executing the code. First the web server(where the site is stored) interprets the php—if there is any, sending the resulting html, css, and javascript to your browser which is then responsible for reading through the code and generating the web site. There are many different browsers out there, most of which generate a web page slightly differently. Due to the lack of internet language standards over the years and many items which can be interpreted in different ways, different browsers tend to implement those features in different ways. The most infamous case of this inconsistency is Internet Explorer which instead of following the standards in many cases has gone as far as to develop proprietary tags and hacks just to accommodate their blatantly incorrect interpretation of the various languages. I won't get into the shady ethics of exploiting their leading browser market share (due to being packaged and integrated with windows) to create a situation where appealing to the masses(as a programmer) means having to completely redesign a website to work with their ridiculous browser engine, but business is business. Cross platform is another issue that needs attention as operating systems come with different fonts, use different file types and plugins. These issues can break layout and make an RIA dysfunctional or not work at all. A framework is simply a library of built in functions, classes, and structures that allow a programmer access to higher level functions with far less code as well as simplifying grammar and taking care of security and cross browser compatibility. I'll go into more detail in the future.