For a long time I’ve been doing things like this within Flex.

[Bindable] private var _skills:Array = 
[
	{label: "---", id: -1},
	{label: "1 - Newbie", id: 1},
	{label: "2 - Some Experience", id: 2},
	{label: "3 - Expert", id: 3},
	{label: "4 - I'm a baller", id: 4}
];

And then binding this data provider to a ComboBox…

<mx:ComboBox id="skillsCB" dataProvider="{_skills}" />

Well it turns out there is a much easier way of doing this that I never knew of until today. ComboBox has a “prompt” attribute that you can set. It’s so easy…

<mx:ComboBox id="skillsCB" dataProvider="{_skills}" prompt="---" />

I told you it was easy. Can’t believe I never noticed it before.