You might want to change the appearance of components as you use them in different applications. You can customize component appearance using the following three approaches, individually or in combination:

Styles User interface (UI) components have style properties that set the appearance of some aspects of a component. Each component has its own set of modifiable style properties, and not all visual aspects of a component can be changed by setting a style. For more information, see Using styles to customize component color and text.

Skins A skin comprises the collection of symbols that make up the graphical display of a component. Skinning is the process of changing the appearance of a component by modifying or replacing its source graphics. A skin can be a small piece, like a border's edge or corner, or a composite piece like the entire picture of a button in its up state (the state in which it hasn't been pressed). A skin can also be a symbol without a graphic, which contains code that draws a piece of the component. Some aspects of a component that cannot be set through its style properties can be set by modifying the skin. For more information, see About skinning components.

Themes A theme is a collection of both styles and skins that you can save as a FLA file and apply to another document. For more information, see About themes.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• Using styles to customize component color and text
• About skinning components
• About themes
• Combining skinning and styles to customize a component