User Guide

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CHAPTER 5
Customizing Components
You might want to change the appearance of components as you use them in different
applications. You can customize component appearance using the following three approaches,
individually or in combination:
Styles User interface (UI) components have style properties that set the appearance of some
aspects of a component. Each component has its own set of modifiable style properties, and
not all visual aspects of a component can be changed by setting a style. For more information,
see “Using styles to customize component color and text” on page 82.
Skins A skin comprises the collection of symbols that make up the graphical display of a
component. Skinning is the process of changing the appearance of a component by modifying
or replacing its source graphics. A skin can be a small piece, like a borders edge or corner, or a
composite piece like the entire picture of a button in its up state (the state in which it hasnt
been pressed). A skin can also be a symbol without a graphic, which contains code that draws
a piece of the component. Some aspects of a component that cannot be set through its style
properties can be set by modifying the skin. For more information, see About skinning
components” on page 96.
Themes A theme is a collection of both styles and skins that you can save as a FLA file and
apply to another document. For more information, see About themes” on page 108.
This chapter contains the following sections:
Using styles to customize component color and text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
About skinning components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
About themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Combining skinning and styles to customize a component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118