Creating a custom track highlight skin on an MX HSlider control in Flex 4

By Peter deHaan On April 14, 2010 · 6 Comments

The following example shows how you can create a custom track highlight skin on an MX HSlider control in Flex 4 by setting the trackHighlightSkin style and the Boolean showTrackHighlight style.

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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2010/04/14/creating-a-custom-track-highlight-skin-on-an-mx-hslider-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="MX_HSlider_trackHighlightSkin_test"
        xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
        xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
        xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx">
    <s:controlBarContent>
        <s:CheckBox id="chckBx"
                label="showTrackHighlight"
                selected="true" />
    </s:controlBarContent>
 
    <mx:HSlider id="hSl"
            value="5"
            trackHighlightSkin="skins.CustomSliderTrackHighlightSkin"
            showTrackHighlight="{chckBx.selected}"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" />
 
</s:Application>

The default Spark skins for the MX/Halo controls/containers can be found in the Flex SDK at:
%Flex SDK%\frameworks\projects\sparkskins\src\mx\skins\spark\*.

And the custom MX HSlider track highlight skin, skins/CustomSliderTrackHighlightSkin.mxml, is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2010/04/14/creating-a-custom-track-highlight-skin-on-an-mx-hslider-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Skin name="CustomSkiderTrackHightlightSkin"
        xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
        xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" 
        width="200" height="11"
        disabledAlpha="0.5">
 
    <s:Rect left="0" right="0" top="2" height="4" radiusX="2">
        <s:fill>
            <s:BitmapFill source="@Embed('assets/pattern_143.gif')" fillMode="repeat" alpha="0.35" />
        </s:fill>
    </s:Rect>
 
</s:Skin>

View source is enabled in the following example.

Background image pattern copyright of Squidfingers.com.

You can also set the showTrackHighlight and trackHighlightSkin styles 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/2010/04/14/creating-a-custom-track-highlight-skin-on-an-mx-hslider-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="MX_HSlider_trackHighlightSkin_test"
        xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
        xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
        xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx">
 
    <fx:Style>
        @namespace s "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark";
        @namespace mx "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx";
 
        mx|HSlider {
            showTrackHighlight: true;
            trackHighlightSkin: ClassReference("skins.CustomSliderTrackHighlightSkin");
        }
    </fx:Style>
 
    <mx:HSlider id="hSl"
            value="5"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" />
 
</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.

About The Author

Peter deHaan

Peter deHaan currently works for Adobe on the Flex SDK QA team. While not working on Flex, Flash, and ColdFusion applications, Peter enjoys making up bios and writing in 3rd person. Peter's rarely updated blog can be found at blogs.adobe.com/pdehaan/, actionscriptexamples.com, airexamples.com, and coldfusionexamples.com.

Visit Authors Website →

Add Widgets (Content Sidebar)

This is your Content Sidebar. Edit this content that appears here in the widgets panel by adding or removing widgets in the Content Sidebar area.

6 Responses to Creating a custom track highlight skin on an MX HSlider control in Flex 4

Brian Davis says:

April 19, 2010 at 10:44 am

Uh — what happen to the “tick” in the Flex 4 HSlider? Can seem to find it/

Reply
- Peter deHaan says:
  
  April 19, 2010 at 10:56 am
  
  @Brian Davis,
  
  Currently, the Spark HSlider only supports a single thumb, no track highlight, no ticks, and no labels. If you need that functionality, you either have to extend s:HSlider and add it yourself, or you can still use the mx:HSlider control.
  
  Peter
  
  Reply
Godspeed says:

May 16, 2010 at 10:36 pm

Hi,

I was wondering if you can recreate the showTrackHighlight feature with the spark sliders. Is this possible?

m.

Reply
Matt Foster says:

December 10, 2010 at 12:20 pm

I’m finding that there are tons of these issues with spark controls where they’ve dropped essential features. I’m constantly going back to mx controls to get things done, all the while the intellisense is recommending the controls that have already failed for my purposes. trackHighlight is a huge one, the other is cue points in the video player, fill colors etc. Is there a roadmap for getting support for these features back or are they just gone for good?

Reply
- Peter deHaan says:
  
  December 10, 2010 at 1:23 pm
  
  @Matt Foster,
  
  Some are probably being considered for future releases, some are probably gone for good (or would need to be implemented in custom skins). Your best bet is to file bugs (or enhancement requests) in the public Flex bug base (http://bugs.adobe.com/flex/) and Adobe will consider them on a case-by-case basis (and the more votes an issue gets, the more likely we are to consider it). So please, please file bugs for items you think should be implemented in Spark controls.
  
  Peter
  
  Reply
JC says:

June 15, 2011 at 10:07 am

I file a bug for the missing spark HSlider highlight related features. Please vote for the bug/feature if you like to see this implemented.
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-30066

Thanks

Reply