How can I create a Glow without using a filter

Question

I am creating an application for iPhone4, and one of the problems I am having is the lack of filter support.
I am trying to create a "stroke" around some bitmaps... an example would be a text field that is white on a bright background - I would put a black stroke around it to contract it... there are other needs as well, but this is an example.
Before, I would just put a glow filter on the text field, tweak the settings and it looked good and did exactly what I wanted.
But iPhone4 high resolution with gpu acceleration don't support filters - and I can't change those requirements... so any and all bitmap filters are out.
Does anyone know of a way I can create a glow filter effect without using filters that would not be a major preformance hit for fps and memory?

Answer 1

Have you tried using tweenMax and code in a glow effect.
Something like this:
import com.greensock.*;
import com.greensock.plugins.*;
TweenPlugin.activate([TintPlugin]);
var glowEffect:TweenMax = new TweenMax(mc,0,{glowFilter:{color:0x330000,alpha:1,blurX:5,blurY:5,strength:2,quality:2,ov erwrite:5}});