User Guide

108 Customizing Components
About themes
Themes are collections of styles and skins. The default theme for Flash is called Halo
(HaloTheme.fla). The Halo theme lets you provide a responsive, expressive experience for
your users. Flash includes additional themes, like Sample (SampleTheme.fla). The Sample
theme provides an example of how you can use more styles for customization. (The
Halo theme does not use all styles included in the Sample theme.) The theme files are located
in the following folders in a default installation:
■ In Windows: C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash
8\language\Configuration\ComponentFLA\
■ On the Macintosh: HD/Applications/Macromedia Flash 8/Configuration/
ComponentFLA/
You can create new themes and apply them to an application to change the look and feel
of all the components. For example, you could create themes that mimic the native operating
system appearance.
Components use skins (graphic or movie clip symbols) to display their appearances. The AS
file that defines each component contains code that loads specific skins for the component.
You can easily create a new theme by making a copy of the Halo or Sample theme and altering
the graphics in the skins.
A theme can also contain a new set of style default values. You must write ActionScript code
to create a global style declaration and any additional style declarations. For more
information, see “Modifying default style property values in a theme” on page 112.
Switching themes
Macromedia Flash installs two themes: Halo and Sample. You’ll notice that the component
reference information for each component contains a table of style properties you can set for
either (or both) themes. So, when you read a style properties table, like the one for the Button
component in “Using styles with the Button component” in the Components Language
Reference, notice which theme supports the style you want. The table indicates Halo, Sample,
or Both (meaning both themes support the style property).
The Halo theme is the default theme for components. So, if you want to use the Sample
theme, you need to switch the current theme from Halo to Sample.