Changing the title bar background fill on a Spark Panel container in Flex Gumbo

The following example shows how you can modify the background fill on a Spark Panel container’s title bar in Flex Gumbo by creating a custom skin and modifying the title bar fill Rect object’s fill property.

Full code after the jump.

The following example(s) require Flash Player 10 and the Adobe Flex 4 SDK. To download the Adobe Flash Builder 4 trial, see http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/. To download the latest nightly build of the Flex 4 SDK, see http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4.
For more information on getting started with Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4, see the official Adobe Flex Team blog.

View MXML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2009/05/02/changing-the-title-bar-background-fill-on-a-spark-panel-container-in-flex-gumbo/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_Panel_titleBar_fill_test"
        xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
        xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
        xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo">

    <s:Panel id="panel"
            title="Spark Panel title"
            horizontalCenter="0"
            verticalCenter="0"
            width="320"
            height="240"
            skinClass="skins.CustomPanelSkin">
        <s:TextArea id="textArea"
                initialize="textArea.text = mx_internal::VERSION;"
                left="20" top="20" />
    </s:Panel>

</s:Application>

And the custom skin class, CustomPanelSkin.mxml, is as follows:

View skins/CustomPanelSkin.mxml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2009/05/02/changing-the-title-bar-background-fill-on-a-spark-panel-container-in-flex-gumbo/ -->
<s:SparkSkin name="CustomPanelSkin"
        xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
        xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
        alpha.disabled="0.5">
    <s:states>
        <s:State name="normal" />
        <s:State name="disabled" />
    </s:states>

    <fx:Metadata>
        <![CDATA[
            [HostComponent("spark.components.Panel")]
        ]]>
    </fx:Metadata>

    <fx:Script>
        <![CDATA[
            /* Define the skin elements that should not be colorized.
               For panel, border and title backround are skinned, but the content area and title text are not. */
            static private const exclusions:Array = ["background", "titleField", "contentGroup"];

            override public function get colorizeExclusions():Array {return exclusions;}

            /* Define the content fill items that should be colored by the "contentBackgroundColor" style. */
            static private const contentFill:Array = ["bgFill"];

            override public function get contentItems():Array {return contentFill};
        ]]>
    </fx:Script>

    <!-- drop shadow -->
    <s:Rect left="0" top="0" right="0" bottom="0">
        <s:filters>
            <s:DropShadowFilter blurX="20" blurY="20" alpha="0.32" distance="11" angle="90" knockout="true" />
        </s:filters>
        <s:fill>
            <s:SolidColor color="0" />
        </s:fill>
    </s:Rect>

    <!-- layer 1: border -->
    <s:Rect left="0" right="0" top="0" bottom="0">
        <s:stroke>
            <s:SolidColorStroke color="0" alpha="0.50" weight="1" />
        </s:stroke>
    </s:Rect>

    <!-- layer 2: background fill -->
    <s:Rect id="background" left="1" top="1" right="1" bottom="1">
        <s:fill>
            <s:SolidColor color="0xFFFFFF" id="bgFill" />
        </s:fill>
    </s:Rect>

    <!-- layer 3: title bar fill -->
    <s:Rect left="1" right="1" top="1" height="30">
       <s:fill>
            <s:SolidColor color="haloBlue" />
       </s:fill>
    </s:Rect>

    <!-- layer 4: title bar highlight -->
    <s:Rect left="1" right="1" top="1" height="30">
       <s:stroke>
            <s:LinearGradientStroke rotation="90" weight="1">
                <s:GradientEntry color="0xEAEAEA" />
                <s:GradientEntry color="0xD9D9D9" />
            </s:LinearGradientStroke>
       </s:stroke>
    </s:Rect>
    <s:Rect left="1" right="1" top="31" height="1">
        <s:fill>
            <s:SolidColor color="0xC0C0C0" />
        </s:fill>
    </s:Rect>

    <!-- layer 5: text -->
    <s:SimpleText id="titleField" lineBreak="explicit"
             left="10" right="4" top="2" height="30"
             verticalAlign="middle" fontWeight="bold" color="white" />

    <s:Group id="contentGroup" left="1" right="1" top="32" bottom="1" />

</s:SparkSkin>

View source is enabled in the following example.

This entry is based on a beta version of the Flex 4 SDK and therefore is very likely to change as development of the Flex SDK continues. The API can (and will) change causing examples to possibly not compile in newer versions of the Flex 4 SDK.