After reading your second post with the .addChild I guess this would be helpful. Here it is
<?xml version="1.0"?> <mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"; creationComplete="addTI()" > <mx:Script> <![CDATA[ import mx.controls.TabBar; import mx.containers.VBox; import mx.controls.TextInput; private var ti:TextInput = new TextInput private function addTI():void { tabN.rawChildren.addChild(ti); } private function Upda():void { var tabBar:TabBar = tabN.getTabAt(0).parent as TabBar; var leftOffset:Number = tabN.getStyle("tabOffset"); var borderThick:Number = tabN.getStyle("borderThickness"); ti.width = 100 ti.height = tabN.getTabAt(0).height switch (tabN.getStyle("horizontalAlign")) { case "left": tabBar.move(0 + borderThick + leftOffset, tabBar.y); ti.move(0 + borderThick + leftOffset + tabBar.width, tabBar.y) break; case "right": tabBar.move(tabN.width - tabBar.width - ti.width -borderThick + leftOffset, tabBar.y); ti.move(tabN.width - ti.width -borderThick + leftOffset, tabBar.y) break; case "center": tabBar.move((tabN.width - tabBar.width - ti.width) / 2 + leftOffset, tabBar.y); ti.move((tabN.width+ tabBar.width - ti.width ) / 2 + leftOffset, tabBar.y) } } ]]> </mx:Script> <mx:TabNavigator id="tabN" width="100%" height="100%" updateComplete="Upda()"> <mx:VBox > </mx:VBox> <mx:VBox > </mx:VBox> <mx:VBox > </mx:VBox> </mx:TabNavigator> <mx:HBox> <mx:Button click="tabN.addChild(new VBox)" label="add child"/> <mx:Button click="tabN.removeChildAt(0)" label="remove child"/> <mx:Button click="tabN.setStyle('horizontalAlign','left')" label="left align"/> <mx:Button click="tabN.setStyle('horizontalAlign','center')" label="center align"/> <mx:Button click="tabN.setStyle('horizontalAlign','right')" label="right align"/> </mx:HBox> </mx:Application> quote: Although at the level of a Flash DisplayObjectContainer, all children are equal, in a Flex Container some children are "more equal than others". (George Orwell, "Animal Farm") In particular, Flex distinguishes between content children and non-content (or "chrome") children. Content children are the kind that can be specified in MXML. If you put several controls into a VBox, those are its content children. Non-content children are the other ones that you get automatically, such as a background/border, scrollbars, the titlebar of a Panel, AccordionHeaders, etc. Most application developers are uninterested in non-content children, so Container overrides APIs such as numChildren and getChildAt() to deal only with content children. For example, Container, keeps its own _numChildren counter. Container assumes that content children are contiguous, and that non-content children come before or after the content children. In order words, Container partitions DisplayObjectContainer's index range into three parts: A B C D E F G H I 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 <- index for all children 0 1 2 3 <- index for content children The content partition contains the content children D E F G. The pre-content partition contains the non-content children A B C that always stay before the content children. The post-content partition contains the non-content children H I that always stay after the content children. Container maintains two state variables, _firstChildIndex and _numChildren, which keep track of the partitioning. In this example, _firstChildIndex would be 3 and _numChildren would be 4. quote: A container typically contains child components, which can be enumerated using the Container.getChildAt() method and Container.numChildren property. In addition, the container may contain style elements and skins, such as the border and background. Flash Player and AIR do not draw any distinction between child components and skins. They are all accessible using the player's getChildAt() method and numChildren property. However, the Container class overrides the getChildAt() method and numChildren property (and several other methods) to create the illusion that the container's children are the only child components. If you need to access all of the children of the container (both the content children and the skins), then use the methods and properties on the rawChildren property instead of the regular Container methods. For example, use the Container.rawChildren.getChildAt()) method. However, if a container creates a ContentPane Sprite object for its children, the rawChildren property value only counts the ContentPane, not the container's children. It is not always possible to determine when a container will have a ContentPane. Note: If you call the addChild or addChildAt method of the rawChildren object, set tabEnabled = false on the component that you have added. Doing so prevents users from tabbing to the visual-only component that you have added.
