Anybody who has used Flex 4 might, like me, have been stopped in their tracks by how different the UI of the default Flex components are. For example, here are some common components from each.

As you can see Flex 3 did a good job of removing the need to add your own style. You just add the components and you're done. This to me was a massive bonus and one of things I've always loved about Flex. This has all changed in Flex 4 though. Here's a snippet from the article on making the transition from Flex 3 to 4 from which I stole the above screenshot:

This is 100% on purpose. Skinning in Flex 3 is rather time consuming and clunky. Couple that with the fact that the mx components donÔÇÖt look half bad and we've all ended up with a lot of apps that looked basically the same. Adobe REALLY wants us to take advantage of the new skinning capabilities in Spark, so they made sure the default wouldnÔÇÖt pass client muster.

This to me is a bit like the controversial "bus plug" scheme here in Gedling. The council spent 11 million on a new road to bypass an old one that got too congested. Instead of just letting the new road do its job and relieve the old road of some traffic they plugged the old one so you can't use it. It's perverse and means most of our regular journeys are now 2 miles longer than they need be.

So, Adobe are forcing us to work their way. The only thing with that is that you need to learn how to work their way, which takes time (a good starting point is to read the article I mentioned earlier). For me, I just don't have the time to learn all this new stuff and so I'm going about it the slow way; picking bits up here and there as I go. Although I am using Flash Builder 4 I'm doing so with the old Halo theme applied to my projects (using the Themes pane in the Project Properties box) and using a heavy mix of Spark (new) and MX (old) components.

If at some point it all clicks and I agree with the others I've heard say this is the best thing ever then I'll let you know. For now though I kind of wish it was like before. That said, Flash Builder 4 is a much better IDE and worth upgrading even if you just developer Flex 3-based apps in it.