Developing Flex 4 Components: Using ActionScript 3.0 and MXML to Extend Flex and AIR Applications

10. Skinning and Styling

Now that you better understand the more developer-orientated side of component development, we now look at how to actually style our components. This is generally an area where most budding component developers shy away, because it can initially appear to be a black art.

After this chapter, you will understand how the styling and skinning process operates and how you can add various styling properties to your components with ease.

Spark Versus Halo

Probably the first thing to clarify about skinning and styling support is the difference between Halo and Spark components. Halo components still use the legacy architecture, and although you can provide them with MXML-based skins just like Spark components, you can manipulate ...