Question

I’m new to Flex and am porting a pure Flash/AS3 application to Flex 4.5.

In my Flex application I have been successfully using DropShadowFilter and GlowFilter to add some interactivity to my custom components on mouse events.

Now after reading more Flex docs, I’ve noticed that I should better use spark.primitives.RectangularDropShadow for the shadows.

But what to use instead of the GlowFilter then?

And are filters still involved in displaying shadows and glows in Flex or do I just create a shadow with

<s:RectangularDropShadow id="myShadow"
distance="20" 
alpha=".25"
blurX="7"
blurY="7"
height="{myRect.height}" 
width="{myRect.width}"/>

and then just call myShadow.visible=true/false depending on the mouse event?

Answer 1

You can use two Drop Shadows offset by 180 degrees. I don’t know if two drop shadow objects are more performant than one glow.

To find out if filters are involved, click in the RectangularDropShadow tag and press F3. Then look to see.