Setting the background color of a Spark Panel container in Flex 4

By Peter deHaan On April 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment

In a previous example, “Setting the content background color of a Spark Panel container in Flex 4″, we saw how you could set the content background color on a Spark Panel container’s children in Flex 4 by setting the contentBackgroundColor style.

The following example shows how you can set the background color on a Spark Panel container in Flex 4 by setting the backgroundColor 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/2010/04/27/setting-the-background-color-of-a-spark-panel-container-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_Panel_backgroundColor_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>
        <mx:Form>
            <mx:FormItem label="backgroundColor:">
                <mx:ColorPicker id="colorPicker"
                        selectedColor="white" />
            </mx:FormItem>
        </mx:Form>
    </s:controlBarContent>
 
    <s:Panel id="panel"
            title="Spark Panel title"
            backgroundColor="{colorPicker.selectedColor}"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0">
        <s:layout>
            <s:VerticalLayout paddingLeft="10" paddingRight="10" paddingTop="10" paddingBottom="10" />
        </s:layout>
        <s:TextInput id="sTI"
                text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." />
        <s:TextArea id="sTA"
                text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." />
    </s:Panel>
 
</s:Application>

View source is enabled in the following example.

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2010/04/27/setting-the-background-color-of-a-spark-panel-container-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_Panel_backgroundColor_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";
 
        s|Panel {
            backgroundColor: haloOrange;
        }
    </fx:Style>
 
    <s:Panel id="panel"
            title="Spark Panel title"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0">
        <s:layout>
            <s:VerticalLayout paddingLeft="10" paddingRight="10" paddingTop="10" paddingBottom="10" />
        </s:layout>
        <s:TextInput id="sTI"
                text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." />
        <s:TextArea id="sTA"
                text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." />
    </s:Panel>
 
</s:Application>

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

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2010/04/27/setting-the-background-color-of-a-spark-panel-container-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_Panel_contentBackgroundColor_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>
        <mx:Form>
            <mx:FormItem label="backgroundColor:">
                <mx:ColorPicker id="colorPicker"
                        selectedColor="white"
                        change="colorPicker_changeHandler(event);"/>
            </mx:FormItem>
        </mx:Form>
    </s:controlBarContent>
 
    <fx:Script>
        <![CDATA[
            import mx.events.ColorPickerEvent;
 
            protected function colorPicker_changeHandler(evt:ColorPickerEvent):void {
                panel.setStyle("backgroundColor", evt.color);
            }
        ]]>
    </fx:Script>
 
    <s:Panel id="panel"
            title="Spark Panel title"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0">
        <s:layout>
            <s:VerticalLayout paddingLeft="10" paddingRight="10" paddingTop="10" paddingBottom="10" />
        </s:layout>
        <s:TextInput id="sTI"
                text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." />
        <s:TextArea id="sTA"
                text="The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." />
    </s:Panel>
 
</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.

Tagged with: backgroundColor • Gumbo

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.

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