Is there a difference between text anti aliasing and font smoothing in flex? If so, what is the difference? Could you provide links or examples?
There is no 'font smoothing' in Flex. Font smoothing is a term used in Windows. If you go into your control panel and open up the 'ClearType Tuning' and go to the 'Advanced' tab, you'll nothing that it mentions font smoothing.
This needs to be set for Flex fonts to have anti-aliasing because Flex uses the OS' default settings for fonts and if font smoothing is disabled, embedded fonts won't be able to AA with ClearType.