Creating a custom skin on the Spark TabBar control in Flex 4

By On October 10, 2010 · 3 Comments

The following example shows how you can create a custom RadioButton based skin on the Spark TabBar control in Flex 4 by setting the skinClass 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/2010/10/10/creating-a-custom-skin-on-the-spark-tabbar-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<s:Application name="Spark_TabBar_skinClass_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:VGroup horizontalAlign="center"
            horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0">
        <mx:ViewStack id="vs" width="300" height="100">
            <s:NavigatorContent label="One"
                    backgroundColor="red"
                    width="100%" height="100%" />
            <s:NavigatorContent label="Two"
                    backgroundColor="haloOrange"
                    width="100%" height="100%" />
            <s:NavigatorContent label="Three"
                    backgroundColor="Yellow"
                    width="100%" height="100%" />
            <s:NavigatorContent label="Four"
                    backgroundColor="haloGreen"
                    width="100%" height="100%" />
            <s:NavigatorContent label="Five"
                    backgroundColor="haloBlue"
                    width="100%" height="100%" />
        </mx:ViewStack>
        <s:TabBar dataProvider="{vs}" skinClass="skins.CustomSparkTabBarSkin" />
    </s:VGroup>
 
</s:Application>

And the custom Spark TabBar skin class, skins/CustomSparkTabBarSkin.mxml, is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- http://blog.flexexamples.com/2010/10/10/creating-a-custom-skin-on-the-spark-tabbar-control-in-flex-4/ -->
<spark:TabBarSkin name="CustomSparkTabBarSkin"
        xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" 
        xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" 
        xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx"
        xmlns:spark="spark.skins.spark.*">
 
    <s:DataGroup id="dataGroup" width="100%" height="100%">
        <s:layout>
            <s:ButtonBarHorizontalLayout gap="-1"/>
        </s:layout>
        <s:itemRenderer>
            <fx:Component>
                <s:RadioButton />
            </fx:Component>
        </s:itemRenderer>
    </s:DataGroup>
 
</spark:TabBarSkin>

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.

 
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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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3 Responses to Creating a custom skin on the Spark TabBar control in Flex 4

  1. Alex says:
    October 28, 2011 at 12:33 am

    I’m trying to use something similar except I have

    I’m looking for a way to swap out the Type of item in the inline renderer so as to achive decoupling.

    I want to use multiple app specific components which extend my CustomButtonBarButton but all use the same skin.

    Is this achivable without making a diferent skin for each?