Defeating Stubborn Skins in Flash MX 2004

[FlashDev]

I see that several people have noticed that certain Flash 7 UI Components have certain un-skinnable elements. They have also correctly guessed that this is because the componenents create these elements with code rather than using skins in the library. Here's how you get around it. First, examine the enemy. He is hard to find, but he is there, hiding in the Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\en\First Run\Classes\mx\containers and Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\en\First Run\Classes\mx\controls directories. Scan through the component's class as and look for the element you want to skin. when you find it, you can either override the function that draws it, or you can access the clip that holds it and tell it to load your skin.

ex.
To change the background of the Window component, you can do this:

my_window.back_mc.attachMovie("myBack", "myBack_mc", -1);

or you could override the createChildren(Void) method.

Philip Keiter
Senior Flash Software Developer
Sphyrras