I just wanted to share a few of the best free Flex skins that I have found. If you want to give your app some style, and you don't have the time to design a Flex skin yourself, you'll likely find something here that can spice up your app.

If you're interested in learning more about how to create new Flex skins or learn how to apply skins you have created, check out How to Create a Flex Skin and How to Apply a Flex Skin.

Enjoy!

This is a follow up to my previous post, For Designers: How to Create a Flex Skin.

Ok, so you just received an email from a designer, since they are scared of Subversion, with an attachment of a fresh new glossy Flex skin (just kidding, we must be nice to our designers....otherwise, they will draw degrading cartoons of us). Below are 3 short tutorials on how to apply the skin, from start to finish.

Setting up Flex Builder:

Importing Skins into Flex Builder:

Testing and Customizing Skins:

I've noticed that many designers are completely scared of Flex. I understand. Flex is scary. However, Adobe is making Rich Internet App design very approachable for UI designers now. So, if you're a designer, it's time to stop complaining and jump on the Flex bandwagon. It's easy. Really.

Below are a few tutorial videos on how to create a skin for a Flex application in Fireworks from start to finish. You can also create skins in Photoshop using a very similar technique.

If you're a developer, don't bother with the mind-numbing nonsense below, see my other post: For Developers: How to Apply a Flex Skin

Setting up Fireworks CS3:

Editing Skin Templates in Fireworks:

Exporting Skins From Fireworks:

As of the first Creative Suite, Adobe made the decision to remove the simple yet uber-helpful feature from Photoshop that allows you to see thumbnail previews of PSD files in Windows Explorer. If you upgraded your older version of Photoshop, you still have this feature, but if you installed CS, CS2, or CS3 from scratch you don't.

ThumbView Lite solves this issue immediately. Enjoy your thumbnails. I know I am.

The concepts introduced around "Web 2.0" have shifted the way users interact with the web and their data. This presentation is an excellent vision of where the web is going (beyond rich user interfaces)...

This is a very cool little application that will allow you to very easily install and run Internet Explorer 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6 and 7. It's especially nice to be able to test pages in IE 6 and 7 on the same machine during development...

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE