The other day i was trying to get a list control to have multiple items set on startup however how to do this was not immediately obvious and after searching the web it seems quite a few other were having the same issue.

Eventually I found the answer on Bruce Phillips blog, thanks a bunch Bruce!

It basically boils down to doing this.

Have a creation complete function on the application which will set the lists selected indices to an array... voila.

Example...

  creationComplete="initApp();" width="243" height="429">

   
            import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;

        [Bindable]
       public var aDemo:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection(
         [ {label:"me", data:"me"},
           {label:"you", data:"you"}, 
           {label:"boo", data:"a dog named boo"} 
         ]);

        private function initApp():void {
         //the array of selected indicies, this can be derived however you want.
         var aTmp:Array = new Array(0,2);

          // set the selectedindicies... and thats it
         lstDemo.selectedIndices = aTmp;
       }
   ]]>