Setting the selection highlight color on a Spark RichEditableText control in Flex 4

by Peter deHaan on November 7, 2009

in RichEditableText, beta2

The following example shows how you can set the text selection highlight color on a Spark RichEditableText control in Flex 4 by setting the focusedTextSelectionColor style.

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".

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2009/11/07/setting-the-selection-highlight-color-on-a-spark-richeditabletext-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_RichEditableText_focusedTextSelectionColor_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:controlBarContent>
        <s:Label text="focusedTextSelectionColor:"
                height="100%" verticalAlign="middle" />
        <mx:ColorPicker id="colorPickr"
                selectedColor="haloBlue"
                change="callLater(richEdTxt.setFocus);" />
    </s:controlBarContent>
 
    <s:RichEditableText id="richEdTxt"
            text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
            focusedTextSelectionColor="{colorPickr.selectedColor}"
            selectionHighlighting="always"
            width="100"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0"
            creationComplete="richEdTxt.selectRange(2, 16);"/>
 
</s:Application>

You can also set the focusedTextSelectionColor style in an external .CSS file or <Style/> block, as seen in the following example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2009/11/07/setting-the-selection-highlight-color-on-a-spark-richeditabletext-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_RichEditableText_focusedTextSelectionColor_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">
 
    <fx:Style>
        @namespace s "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark";
        @namespace mx "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/halo";
 
        s|RichEditableText {
            focusedTextSelectionColor: yellow;
        }
    </fx:Style>
 
    <s:RichEditableText id="richEdTxt"
            text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
            selectionHighlighting="always"
            width="100"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0"
            creationComplete="richEdTxt.selectRange(2, 16);"/>
 
</s:Application>

Or, you can set the focusedTextSelectionColor style using ActionScript, as seen in the following example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2009/11/07/setting-the-selection-highlight-color-on-a-spark-richeditabletext-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_RichEditableText_focusedTextSelectionColor_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:controlBarContent>
        <s:Label text="focusedTextSelectionColor:"
                height="100%" verticalAlign="middle" />
        <mx:ColorPicker id="colorPickr"
                selectedColor="haloBlue"
                change="colorPickr_changeHandler(event);" />
    </s:controlBarContent>
 
    <fx:Script>
        <![CDATA[
            import mx.events.ColorPickerEvent;
 
            protected function colorPickr_changeHandler(evt:ColorPickerEvent):void {
                richEdTxt.setStyle("focusedTextSelectionColor", evt.color);
                callLater(richEdTxt.setFocus);
            }
        ]]>
    </fx:Script>
 
    <s:RichEditableText id="richEdTxt"
            text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
            selectionHighlighting="always"
            width="100"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0"
            creationComplete="richEdTxt.selectRange(2, 16);"/>
 
</s: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.

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