ScaleNine has offered a Flex themes gallery for the last couple of years. Many of the selections are pretty basic, but several seem to be well designed.

Recently they announced the Skin to Win Challenge for Flex skin designs. I’ve been doing a bunch of skinning for Flex over the past year, so this really caught my eye. The grand prize is pretty extravagant: 

• (1) MacBook Air with SSD
• (1) Copy of Adobe CS3 Master Suite
• (1) Copy of Adobe Flex Builder 3 Pro
• (1) Ticket to Adobe MAX
• and a feature on Adobe DevNet

Flex Skinning – Editing Skin Templates from Andrew Shorten on Vimeo.

I tried it out and it was easy to use. Unfortunately, exporting skins from Fw limits you to bitmap (.png) rather than vector artwork. I personally prefer to use vectors, so I’ll also be using the Illustrator template for most of my entry.

Regardless, Firework has finally managed to gain my attention. Another benefit I  immediately discovered was the ability to manipulate anything on stage without selecting the Layer first - a basic feature that Photoshop lacks.

Once I win the Skin to Win Challenge, I’m going to have to spend more time with Fireworks on my new Mac Air laptop. Maybe I can learn more about Fireworks at Max ;-)