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The next version of our IDE, Flex Builder, will be called Flash Builder 4.

There is already available a public beta for Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst (check Adobe Labs for downloads).

Mihai Corlan (Platform Evangelist for Adobe):
“At the same time, we will not change the name of Flex Builder 3. This will stay as it is now. Furthermore, the names of the Flex framework, and the Flex SDK, remain unchanged. The same goes for Flash Professional, which remains unchanged.”
….
“This has happened to me more than once. When I ask people at conferences “Who’s a Flex developer?” many people are unsure how to answer. Why? Because some of you are using the Flex framework, to create Flex or AIR applications, and not our IDE (Flex Builder), some of you are using Flex Builder, but without using the Flex framework (you use ActionScript 3 to create Flash applications). Thus the uncertainty.

Of course, the correct answer is this: anyone who uses the Flex framework, is a Flex developer. It doesn’t matter what tools you use to create these applications. At the same time, any Flex application gets compiled into a SWF file, which is played by the Flash Player. The same happens with the applications written using ActionScript and not the Flex framework.

So looking at it from this perspective, I think it makes a lot of sense. Have the developer tool that is used for creating Flash/AIR applications with or without the Flex framework called Flash Builder 4.”

Here you can see the live result and also download the project source code by right clicking inside the application.

Step 1:
Create Up, Over, Down, Disabled states for the button with Photoshop

1.1 Open Photoshop and choose the desired button size. I will choose 90×28px with transparent background.

1.2 Using the “rounded rectagle tool” create the button to look like in the image

1.3 Duplicate the existing layer, set the “Fill” property to 0 and then apply a gradient effect like in the image below.

1.4 now let’s make the button cloured . Apply to the first layer (original) an horizontal gradient overlay like in the image.

1.5 To make the button look even better we add a border and some inner glow to the originl layer like in the images below

1.6 Duplicate the first layer (original) and edit the colors so you can get all 4 states of our button.

1.7 after getting ready all states for the buttons export them 1 by 1 as .png and name them button_up.png button_over.png button_down.png and button_dis.png

Step 2:
Add images to project and create CSS for the button

2.1 Create an Adobe Flex project and name it PhotoshopButton.

2.2 Create a folder inside the /src folder and name it /images

2.3 Copy the 4 png images to /src/images/

2.4 Create a folder inside the /src folder and name it /css, inside this folder Add a new css file and name it main.css

2.5 Inside the main.css file add the following button style:


/* CSS file */
Button
{
     up-skin: Embed(source="/images/button_up.png");
     over-skin: Embed(source="/images/button_over.png");
     down-skin: Embed(source="/images/button_down.png");
     disabled-skin: Embed(source="/images/button_dis.png");
     selected-down-skin: Embed(source="/images/button_down.png");
     selected-up-skin: Embed(source="/images/button_down.png");
    

     color: #ffffff;
     roll-over-color: #000000;
     disabled-color: #efefef;
}



2.6 Your project should look until now like this

2.7 Open the PhotoshopButton.mxml file and add the reference to your css file



<mx:Style source="css/main.css"/>

//Then add some buttons and let's see how does it look

<mx:HBox width= "100%" horizontalAlign="center">
    <mx:Button label= "Click Me!"/>
    <mx:Button label= "Disabled" enabled= "false"/>
</mx:HBox>




And again the result…

That’s all, enjoy!