With today’s release of the Flex 2 Beta 2 we’re also releasing a companion Flex 2 Style Explorer Beta 2. You’ll notice a lot of changes in naming to styles in Beta 2, and so if you’re working with Beta 2, you’ll need to use this version of the Style Explorer to generate the right CSS.
The Flex 2 Style Explorer (beta) is now available for use. It being a beta, built with a beta product, there are the usual caveats. Being Flex 2, of course, to use this you’ll need the Flash Player 8.5 to run it. Also, as Flex 2 is beta, there are some interesting behaviors you’ll notice in terms of the way some things might look. And finally, as this is built on Beta 1 of Flex 2.0 some things may, and most likely WILL change in later versions. Once the next Beta comes out, I’ll update it to beta 2, and re-submit.
While you can go pretty far in visual design of Flex components using straight CSS, there are some limitations. It an attempt to address those limitations, I’ve created a programmatic skin set for Flex that can be easily customized with CSS for effects such as the screenshot below: 
One of the great things about Flex is the “mouseOver” event that pretty much any component, including containers, has available. What this means is that we can trigger almost any event without requiring a mouse click. Why and when would you want to do such a thing? Imagine, for example, a list with details, as shown in the flex application below.
Just a quick note that we’ve recently published an article on the Macromedia Developer Center (DevNet) related to the Flex Style Explorer. In addition to the things that have already been mentioned here, there’s also an analysis of the Designer-Developer workflow, and how the Flex Style Explorer can help to bridge that gap. To view the full article, go to http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/style_explorer.html
Recently had an engagement where we were tasked with accurately simulating a Microsoft Windows application with Flex. In the process, we created a Windows XP skin for Flex Components that we’re now offering up to the Flex community as a whole.
The Flex Style Explorer has been public now for several weeks, and we’ve already gotten a lot of great feedback. Some of those suggestions have been implemented in this update (with many more to follow).
Macromedia Consulting is happy to share our initial version of the Flex Style Explorer.
This application grew out of our experience working with other visual designers and user-experience professionals who were tasked with creating visual designs for Flex applications, and were often asking for some tool to help them in that pursuit.
