Ok, it may have been thought of millions of times before, and there's probably one of these articles somewhere round here. Sue me, I was quite pleased when I worked out how to do this. It makes the text in MMF appear as if it was being typed (like the typewriter appearance effect in PowerPoint).

1) Create a counter (could also be an active object using one of the alterable values)

2) Create your text item. If you have more than one paragraph, add them in as well.

3) Add the event
Every 0.01 seconds:
Add 1 to Counter

4) Now for the tricky part. add this event as follows:

Always:
Set "Left$( paragraph$( "String", paragraph( "String" ) - 1 ), Value( "Counter" ) )"

5) Run your app and it should work. Change the justification of your string to make the effect slightly different.

6) Advanced Stuff: You can make the text appear and dissappear, with different paragraphs, say when an option is rolled over in a menu.

Just make the Button Objects and set them all to the same group.

Add

Always + Mouse is NOT over Group.1:
Set counter to zero

and replace the "Every 0.01 seconds: Add 1 to Counter" event with

Every 0.01 seconds + Mouse is over Group.1:
Add 1 to Counter

Finally you can make it so the correct paragraph is set.

Mouse is over Button N
Set Paragraph "String" to N

Where N is the number you want.

There you go. Like I said its probably been done before, but I don't care. Hope its of use to someone.

Thanks for reading.