Using the Halo theme in Flex 4

The following example shows how you can set the Halo controls to use the old Halo skins instead of the new Spark skins in Flex 4 by setting the -theme compiler option to the Halo theme (halo.swc).

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 beta, check out the Adobe Flash Builder 4 page on the Adobe Labs site. To download the latest build of the Flex 4 SDK, see http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4. For instructions on using the beta Flex 4 SDK in Flex Builder 3, see "Using the beta Flex 4 SDK in Flex Builder 3".

View MXML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2009/07/14/using-the-halo-theme-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_Halo_theme_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:VGroup horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" >
        <s:Button id="sBtn"
                label="I'm a Spark Button" />
 
        <mx:Button id="hBtn"
                label="I'm a Halo Button" />
    </s:VGroup>
 
</s:Application>

Finally, you need to change your Flex compiler arguments to use the halo.swc theme:
1) In Flash Builder 4, select Project > Properties from the main menu.
2) Select Flex Compiler from the left menu.
3) In the Additional compiler arguments text field, add the following argument:

-theme=${flexlib}/themes/Halo/halo.swc

4) Click the OK button to apply the changes and close the dialog box.
5) Recompile and run the application.

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.

Tagged as: Gumbo, theme