There was a hands on session earlier today, but nothing much to report from that.  Here are some notes from this session:


- recap on CSS styling Flex
- recap on skinning in Flex
   - short discussion on Scale 9 skinning
      - scalenine.com - on CCA license (use at will with credit to authors)
      - flex exchange (beta) - licenses vary
   - short discussion on programmatic skinning:
      - most Flex default L&F is currently using programmatic skinning
      - can define new style props on skins (allows single skin to take on different appearance)

- standard skinning steps
   - create art
   - export art in Flex friendly format (Flash, SVG, PNG, etc)
   - create Flex CSS to attach skins

- Flex Skin Design extensions
   - make skinning easier
   - new for Flash CS3, Photoshop CS3, Fireworks CS3, Illustrator CS3

- Flex Builder 3 makes importing artwork and CSS setup much easier
   - new import artwork wizard
   - imports and generates CSS code
   - can be viewed immediately in CSS design mode and have styles tweaked
   - Scale 9 grid can be edited in CSS design mode (needed for raster images)

- discussion on difference between skin parts and skin states
- each skin part can have a skin state (e.g. scrollBar's thumb up state, down state, etc)
- transitions can be defined between each state

- in Flash, additional keyframes can be added that are transitions
- the names defines the transition (e.g. up-over:start, up-over:end)
- wildcards are support
- an example of using this would be to fade a color into a new color when going to over state
- can define to not define the reverse transition and Flash will just play reverse

- in CSS design view, under global, can set a Font to a non-standard Font and now check embed
- note to be sure of legal issues of embedding a font