About Skinning Components - MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING COMPONENTS Use Manual

Select File > Import > Open External Library, and select the FLA file of the theme you want to
3.
apply to your document.
If you haven't created a new theme, you can use the Sample theme.
In the theme's Library panel, select Flash UI Components 2/Themes/MMDefault and drag the
4.
Assets folder of any components in your document to the ThemeApply.fla library.
For example, drag the RadioButton Assets folder to the ThemeApply.fla library.
If you're unsure about which components are in the document, drag the Sample Theme movie
clip to the Stage. The skins are automatically assigned to components in the document.
Note: The Live Preview of the components on the Stage will not reflect the new theme.
If you dragged individual component Assets folders to the ThemeApply.fla library, make sure
5.
the Assets symbol for each component is set to Export in First Frame.
For example, the Assets folder for the RadioButton component is called RadioButton Assets; it
has a symbol called RadioButtonAssets, which contains all of the individual asset symbols. If
you set Export in First Frame on the RadioButtonAssets symbol, all individual asset symbols
will also export in the first frame.
Select Control > Test Movie to see the document with the new theme applied.
6.
In this example, make sure you have a RadioButton instance on the Stage and set its
property to
false
appearance.

About skinning components

Skins are movie clip symbols a component uses to display its appearance. Most skins contain
shapes that represent the component's appearance. Some skins contain only ActionScript code
that draws the component in the document.
Version 2 components are compiled clips—you cannot see their assets in the library. However, the
Flash installation includes FLA files that contain all the component skins. These FLA files are
called themes. Each theme has a different appearance and behavior, but contains skins with the
same symbol names and linkage identifiers. This lets you drag a theme onto the Stage in a
document to change its appearance. You also use the theme FLA files to edit component skins.
The skins are located in the Themes folder in the Library panel of each theme FLA file. (For more
information about themes, see
Each component is composed of many skins. For example, the down arrow of the ScrollBar
subcomponent consists of four skins: ScrollDownArrowDisabled, ScrollDownArrowDown,
ScrollDownArrowOver, and ScrollDownArrowUp. The entire ScrollBar uses 13 different skin
symbols.
Some components share skins; for example, components that use scroll bars—such as
ComboBox, List, and ScrollPane—share the skins in the ScrollBar Skins folder. You can edit
existing skins and create new skins to change the appearance of components.
80 Chapter 5: Customizing Components
in the Actions panel in order to see the new disabled RadioButton
"About themes" on page 77.)
enabled