Chapter 22. Converting Artwork to Components in Your Projects
IN THIS CHAPTER
Convert layers to custom components
Nesting components
Convert artwork to a button
Create check boxes and radio buttons
Convert artwork to a text input field
Convert artwork to a scroll bar
Flex applications are constructed as a collection of components. Each component fulfills a specific function, be it displaying a particular aspect of the visual interface of the application or performing some specific programming task.
You can use Catalyst to convert your primary interface elements into components.
Creating Custom Components
Catalyst includes the ability to convert artwork into one of 11 common Flex user interface components. They are:
Button
Checkbox
Radio Button
Toggle Button
Text Input
Horizontal Slider
Vertical Slider
Scroll Panel
Horizontal Scrollbar
Vertical Scrollbar
Data List
While those provide important building blocks for your application, most of your assets will in fact end up becoming custom components. Any element, or more often, any group of elements, that does not fit into one of the 11 existing component types will become a custom component.
More frequently, you will simply want to convert any group of related assets as a component. For example, the collection of elements that is designed to make up a view state should be converted to a custom component.
Convert artwork to a custom component
You can create a custom component by selecting the assets you want to convert, then use the heads-up display (HUD) to ...
Get Flash® Catalyst™ CS5 Bible now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.