Styling text within Flash TextField using ActionScript3 & external CSS file

I've made an example for styling text in an ActionScript3 project without using any Flex classes.
I embedded font, css & xml-files - feel free to load these at runtime.

source

Embed your fonts, styles & data

[Embed(source="/assets/font/Verdana.ttf", fontFamily="embeddedFont", mimeType="application/x-font-truetype")]
private static const embeddedFont:Class;
[Embed(source="/assets/font/Verdana Bold.ttf", fontFamily="embeddedFontBold", fontWeight="bold", mimeType="application/x-font-truetype")]
private static const embeddedFontBold:Class; 
[Embed(source="/assets/css/textFieldStyles.css", mimeType="application/octet-stream")]
public static const styleSheet:Class;
[Embed(source="/assets/xml/data.xml", mimeType="application/octet-stream")]
public static const xmlData:Class;

Register fonts

public function Application() {
    Font.registerFont(embeddedFont);
    Font.registerFont(embeddedFontBold);
    createTextField();
}

Create TextField, assign StyleSheet and data

private function createTextField():void {
    var textField:TextField = new TextField();
    addChild(textField);
    
    textField.width = 500;
    textField.multiline = true;
    textField.wordWrap = true;
    textField.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
    textField.embedFonts = true;
    textField.antiAliasType = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;
    
    textField.styleSheet = 
        StyleSheetUtil.forClassDefinition(styleSheet);
    textField.htmlText = new XML(new xmlData());
}

Styling text within Flex 3 TextArea using external CSS file

If you ever wondered how to use external style-sheets within a Flex 3 TextArea control to format text here's a nice solution.

example application
source

Embed your textfield styles in flex-applications css file

Application {
    fontFamily: embeddedFont;
    styleSheet: Embed(source="textFieldStyles.css", mimeType="application/octet-stream");
}

Create StyleSheet from style-definition and assign it and your data to the TextArea instance

private function applicationComplete():void {
    textArea.styleSheet = 
        StyleSheetUtil.forClassDefinition(getStyle("styleSheet"));
    textArea.htmlText = data;
}