Flash MX 2004 has pretty much put the kaibash on the pixel font. Apparently, the new Flash has the ability to convert custom fonts to pixel fonts and embed that version into the movie on publish. Crazy, right?.

Here’s the skinny, though:
Flash doesn’t use the vector rednering of the font to draw the pixel font version. It uses the fonts embedding hinting. Hinting is a set of rules embedded in a font’s rendering information, just like kerning and leading. It determines how a font will be drawn when displayed for screen. This keeps the spaces that the font characters, or glyphs, on even pixels and prevents strange shapes and accidental fills. Flash was unable to make use of this information in the past. Now it can. Sorta.

Zeh Fernando has written an in-depth article on the subject and can explain it far better than I.