ComboBox prompt disappears when published to HTML

Question

I am creating a form which contains four ComboBox components. I have defined the "prompt" property for each of these ComboBox components using the Component Inspector. The only real difference between these four ComboBox components is how their dataProvider property is defined.
Two of these components use DataProvider objects which I have defined using Actionscript. I defined the dataProvider property for the other two ComboBox components using the Component Inspector.
My problem is that when I publish the Flash movie to HTML, the prompts disappears for the two ComboBoxes whose dataProviders I defined using Actionscript. The prompt remains visible for the two ComboBoxes whose dataProvider property I defined in the Component Inspector. I should also mention that prompts for all four ComboBoxes appears just fine when I just publish to Flash.
I have tried correcting this by setting the "prompt" property using Actionscript but the result is the same.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions on how this may be corrected

Answer 1

I finally found a solution to my problem, however, I am not entirely sure I understand why the problem is there in the first place.
One of the things I did not mention in my original post, is that the DataProvider objects for the ComboBoxes are populated with XML from an external file which I am loading via a URLLoader object.
I originally had set the style of the ComboBox components within the same function that I am using to load the XML (I have called this function "init"). When the XML is loaded, I call another function to populate the DataProvider object for the ComboBoxes with XML. For some reason, I have to set the style of the ComboBox components again within that function otherwise it is as if there were no styles applied. The following code demonstrates my problem. I added in the timer function just to help demonstrate the issue, namely that the style set in the init function only applies until the DataProvider object is created and assigned to the ComboBox.
import fl.data.DataProvider;
var cbTextFormat:TextFormat;
var xmlStatesLoader:URLLoader;
var xmlStates:XML;
var dpStates:DataProvider;
function init():void {
//load data for states selection list
xmlStatesLoader = new URLLoader();
xmlStatesLoader.load(new URLRequest("states.xml"));
xmlStatesLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);
xmlStatesLoader.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, errorHandler);
//set the text format for ComboBox text fields
cbTextFormat = new TextFormat();
cbTextFormat.color = 0x0000FF;
cbTextFormat.font = "Arial";
//set style for cbOne ComboBox
cbOne.textField.setStyle("textFormat", cbTextFormat);
cbOne.textField.setStyle("embedFonts", true);
function onComplete(e:Event):void {
//notice that the prompt is displayed until the timer runs out and the onTimerComplete function is called
var myTimer:Timer = new Timer(1000, 3);
myTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER_COMPLETE, onTimerComplete);
myTimer.start();
function onTimerComplete(e:TimerEvent):void {
xmlStates = new XML(xmlStatesLoader.data);
dpStates = new DataProvider(xmlStates);
cbOne.dataProvider = dpStates;
cbOne.prompt = "Loaded";
//uncomment the following lines to fix error
//cbOne.textField.setStyle("textFormat", cbTextFormat);
//cbOne.textField.setStyle("embedFonts", true);
function errorHandler(e:IOErrorEvent):void {
trace("XML Loading Error: " + e);
init();