Sorry, the code in my last comment got eaten. Basically, why can’t I skin a button by putting a BitmapImage within its tags?

I appreciate the explanation though. I want to use my psds and ais too! This skinning thing seems heavyhanded though.

I’m not sure if I know what you mean. If you don’t need to skin then you can simply use the default spark-buttons.

The Spark-Button comes without an icon, so if you want one, then you would need to extend the component or the skin.

If you don’t need a generic way to have your Icon-Buttons you can embedd the FXG-Definitions right into the skin (so you would have one - mostly duplicated - skin per Icon-Button). If you wan’t a more generic approach, you have to externalise the Icon-Graphic. I wanted to use FXG for this and this post looks into this.

To add graphics you could also simply rely on bitmap-based images or vectors in a swf or swc like in flex 3. Have a look at this post .

Now, Adobe has a clear dedication to FXG. The Flex 4 api and components are clearly laid out to use with FXG, the whole Product-Suite has FXG as a new Export-Format and Flash-Catalyst use FXG.

Personally I like to have an editable vector-graphics format right in Flash-Builder. With FXG, once the Export is done, I can esily edit some aspects of the graphics right in the IDE - and using FXG gives me advantages when using some tags (transitions) or working with the graphics-api in Flex 4. That’s why I used the round-trip via FC (which gives me nice mxml-components with FXG that I can use right away.)

Now, Flash-Catalyst and Flex 4 is not quite where I’d love it to be. I think we need a way to export FXG-Definitions to a library and load and access them at runtime. Adobe is not there yet, but I’m pretty sure that this will be added with priority in later versions.

Even with this limitations I’m gonna use FXG wherever I can but I think it’s perfectly ok to use other formats if this suits the task.

Does this answer your question?

Why import graphics from catalyst if you can’t use them easily? This is a one time interaction for one project, I don’t need to skin! I will continue reading your examples, but if you have some quick enlightenment, it would be much appreciated.