There is no need to add information
for the Scale 9 as it is already included in the symbols (Figure 5-34).
Figure 5-34. This CSS links the skin state to our symbol.
All that is left is to link this CSS file to the MXML (Figure 5-35). Now any ComboBox that is added to
this application will have the visual look that we have created.
Figure 5-35. Linking CSS to MXML
Summary
Although you can do a significant amount of modification to a design through CSS, when you need to
have a dramatic change to the visuals of a component, you may have to do it through skinning. You
can create skins for your components by either creating images for them (using Photoshop) or by creating
a SWF file with the symbols included for each of the skin states (using Illustrator).
By skinning your components, you can change their texture and shape. Note that we have worked on
the shape of the component but have not added text to it. Text is still controlled through CSS (as we
did in Chapter 2).
In the next chapter you??™ll learn how Flex and Flash can be used together. This will involve bringing
Flash animations into Flex Builder using a variety of techniques.
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CHAPTER 5
What we??™ll cover in this chapter:
Using a loader to import Flash animations
Controlling Flash animations through Flex
Creating dynamic skins for Flex components in Flash
Files used in this chapter:
octo.swf
style.css
FlexAndFlash.mxml
Under the hood, Flash and Flex are closely related. Both work with ActionScript 3.
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