Almost anybody who has done a little Flex programming has created a basic custom component using MXML. But what if you want to do something more extravagant – like creating a custom skin, or drawing entirely new user interface elements from scratch?

During this session, we will go through the process of creating a more advanced custom Flex component using ActionScript. This method requires that you implement some special functions in UIComponent, which allow the Flex framework to render your component properly and understand how it should appear on screen.

If we have time, we will also take a look at some open source frameworks (OpenFlux and Degrafa) that take an alternative approach to customizing Flex visuals.