OK, one of the great things about working with Flex is how configurable the design is.  You can use CSS, easily create skins by using images or programatically with ActionScript.  So why do so many flex apps look like, er, flex apps.  I think for two reasons.  The big take up on flex has been by coders rather then designers, and we don’t care what it looks like really – we just worry about it working.  And the other reason is linked to this, when designers do get involved it all seems far too complicated and codey.

There are two great little apps for getting around this, one which I’m sure everyone has had a play with (when I say everone I mean the flex community, I’m sure that my Dad isn’t really all that excited about it) is the Flex Style Explorer.  This cool app allows you to try out different CSS on Flex Framework components to see what it looks like and generates the CSS code for you to pop into your own applications.

The other cracking app is FlexSpy.  This is like the Flex Style Explorer, but it actually allows you to apply the same concept to your own application.  Really handy and very clever.  You can see and example of it working here.