Skinning Flex Components with Fireworks

Abstract

The Adobe Flex framework (also known as the Flex SDK) is a powerful foundation upon which many sophisticated Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are built. One of the core features of the Flex framework is the set of user interface components that it ships with. These components range from simple buttons, check boxes, and radio buttons to complex data grids, combo boxes, and text editors. If you’ve seen a large number of Flex applications, you may have started to recognize them as “Flex applications.” We added the quotation marks because the use of the default component skins tends to give Flex-based applications a similar look. This is fine if you want to create a quick application that has a nice look and feel (the default skins are clean and aesthetically pleasing), but not so fine if you want to create a branded experience that stands out among the crowd.