About Themes - MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING COMPONENTS Use Manual

About themes

Themes are collections of styles and skins. The default theme for Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX
Professional 2004 is called Halo (HaloTheme.fla). The Halo theme lets you provide a responsive,
expressive experience for your users. Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 include one
additional theme, 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:
•
Windows: \Program Files\Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\language\
Configuration\ComponentFLA\
•
Macintosh: HD/Applications/Macromedia Flash MX 2004/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
Creating a new theme
If you don't want to use the Halo theme or the Sample theme, you can modify one of them to
create a new theme.
Some skins in the themes have a fixed size. You can make them larger or smaller and the
components will automatically resize to match them. Other skins are composed of multiple
pieces, some static and some that stretch.
Some skins (for example, RectBorder and ButtonSkin) use the ActionScript drawing API to draw
their graphics, because it is more efficient in terms of size and performance. You can use the
ActionScript code in those skins as a template to adjust the skins to your needs.
For a list of the skins supported by each component and their properties, see
"Components Dictionary," on page
To create a new theme:
Select the theme FLA file that you want to use as a template, and make a copy.
1.
Give the copy a unique name such as MyTheme.fla.
Select File > Open MyTheme.fla in Flash.
2.
Select Window > Library to open the library if it isn't open already.
3.
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Chapter 6,
About themes 77