This solution is not ideal because users will see an awkward flickering as the textfields appear and disappear just before and after printing. Also, in general, there is no guaruntee that Flash will send the image of the drawingArea clip to the printer at the exact moment the textfields are visible. If Flash is a fraction of a second late, they may not appear in the printout.

	Figure 3: The Printing Clip. Notice the printing clip is located outside the visible area of the movie.

The solution, as I mentioned at the beginning, is to use an off-screen movie clip. Copy what is on the drawingArea clip to a movie clip outside the visible area, and print that off-screen clip. It turns out that Flash is perfectly capable of printing clips that are beyond the borders of the visible area (see Figure 3).

Create another clip called printingClip. Make it the same size as drawingClip, but keep it out of the visible area of the movie. To that clip, add a pair of TextFields at the top for the exhibit info and date. To further improve the look of the printout, you can stick in a border as well.

The print button needs to make a copy of what is on the current drawing area. To do this, change the print button handler:

printButton.onPress = function() {
	// we need to make a  copy of circleCount circles
for (var i = 0; i < circleCount; i++) {
	// first find the circle clip on the drawing area
		var drawnCircle = eval("drawingArea.circle" + i);
	
	// create a new circle clip on the print area
	printingArea.attachMovie("circle","circle" + i,i);
	var printCircle = eval("printingArea.circle" + i);
		
	// move the new circle clip to the same position as the other clip
	printCircle._x = drawnCircle._x;
	printCircle._y = drawnCircle._y;
	
	// set color of the new circle clip
	var drawnCircleColor = new Color(drawnCircle);
	var printCircleColor = new Color(printCircle);
	printCircleColor.setRGB(drawnCircleColor.getRGB());			
}

printingArea.dateField.text = new Date();

print(printingArea,"bframe");