[flexcoders] 2 PopUpButton questions: force opening upwards + red and black item colors

[Alexander Farber]

Hello,

I'm trying to port a bigger project from Flash CS4 to Flex 3
and have a problem that the PopUpButton, that is located
at the right bottom of my app, opens downwards when
I click it and thus is being cut off. Only if I resize the
browser, it will open upwards as actually wanted by me.

I've tried to prepare a simpler test case (s. the code below)
to demonstrate my problem, but can't  reproduce it :-/

Also I would appreciate if someone could reproduce
me a simple trick to render some of the items (card suits)
in red foreground color instead of the default black?
Do I have to create a separate file as an item renderer
(still reading up there... and don't understand yet,
how to specify that file in my menu which I create in AS)
or is there maybe a simpler trick?

Thank you for any hints and below is my test code
Alex

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml";
creationPolicy="all">
        <mx:Style>
                @font-face {
                        src:url("C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\times.ttf");
                        fontFamily: myFont;
                        /* card suits */
                        unicodeRange: U+2660-U+266B;
                }
                Menu {
                        fontFamily: myFont;
                        fontSize: 24;
                }
        </mx:Style>
        
        <mx:Script>
                <![CDATA[
                        import mx.controls.*;

                        private function createMenu():void {
                                var bids:Array = [{label: "Pass"}];
                                for (var i:uint = 7; i <= 10; i++)
                                        for (var j:uint = 0; j < 4; j++)
                                                bids.unshift({label: 
i+"♠♣♦♥".charAt(j%4)});
                                
                                var menu:Menu = new Menu();
                                menu.dataProvider = bids;
                                menu.selectedIndex = 0;
                                pub.popUp = menu;
                        }
                        
                ]]>
        </mx:Script>
        
        <mx:Canvas width="100%" height="100%">
        </mx:Canvas>
        
        <mx:ApplicationControlBar width="100%">
                <mx:Spacer width="100%"/>
                <mx:PopUpButton id="pub" creationComplete="createMenu();"/>
        </mx:ApplicationControlBar>
</mx:Application>