I think I've found a bug in the skin parser.  I'm using the new <object> tags method of including controls.  In particular, I'm trying to include a search field with an image as the submit button.  If I use the following code in my skin:

<object id="dnnSEARCH" codetype="dotnetnuke/server" codebase="SEARCH">
   <param name="ShowWeb" value="False" />
   <param name="ShowSite" value="False" />
   <param name="Submit" value="<img src=&quot;img/search.png&quot; alt=&quot;Search&quot; class=&quot;SearchButton&quot; />" />
</object>

then I get the following HTML fragment on the rendered page

<input name="dnn$dnnSEARCH$txtSearch" type="text" maxlength="255" size="20" id="dnn_dnnSEARCH_txtSearch" class="NormalTextBox" onkeydown="return __dnn_KeyDown('13', ' __doPostBack(%27dnn$dnnSEARCH$cmdSearch%27,%27%27)', event);" />&nbsp;
  <a id="dnn_dnnSEARCH_cmdSearch" class="SkinObject" href=" __doPostBack('dnn$dnnSEARCH$cmdSearch','')"><img src="/Portals/_default/Skins/SPL/img/search.png" alt="Search" class="SearchButton" </a>

Note that there is no closing ">" on the img tag!

I'm trying to write a valid xhtml skin, so I'd used an xhtml-style img tag as the param value.  If instead I use a HTML4-style img tag with the following in the skin:

<object id="dnnSEARCH" codetype="dotnetnuke/server" codebase="SEARCH">
 <param name="ShowWeb" value="False" />
 <param name="ShowSite" value="False" />
 <param name="Submit" value="<img src=&quot;img/search.png&quot; alt=&quot;Search&quot; class=&quot;SearchButton&quot;>" />
</object>

Then I get the following HTML on the rendered page

<input name="dnn$dnnSEARCH$txtSearch" type="text" maxlength="255" size="20" id="dnn_dnnSEARCH_txtSearch" class="NormalTextBox" onkeydown="return __dnn_KeyDown('13', ' __doPostBack(%27dnn$dnnSEARCH$cmdSearch%27,%27%27)', event);" />&nbsp;
  <a id="dnn_dnnSEARCH_cmdSearch" class="SkinObject" href=" __doPostBack('dnn$dnnSEARCH$cmdSearch','')"><img src="/Portals/_default/Skins/SPL/img/search.png" alt="Search" class="SearchButton"></a>
</span>

That is to say, perfectly correct, includes the closing ">" on the img tag.

I think it should be possible to write valid XHTML skins including such images - I'd also have thought that the skin parser should simply take the param value as given in any case.  Whatever, I reckon it as a bug.

This took me quite a while to find.  I develop in Firefox, which had coped with the badly formed tag so well that I never realised there was a problem.  Chrome, IE7 and IE8 in compatibility mode also coped fine but in IE8 in IE8 mode I had a really weird layout problem (much lower down the page) and it was quite some time before I discovered it was this badly-formed image tag at the top.

has anyone else encountered this or similar problems?  And do I need to file a bug rapport somewhere else or will this posting suffice?  (I'm using DNN 05.04.04 (2) Community Edition)

This is already logged as a bug.  The issue is the closing /> which causes problems with the parser.  The workaround for now, as I have pointed out in Gemini, is to html encode the closing bracket so that it becomes /&gt; which is what we do in the MinimalExtropy skin

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Joe Brinkman
DNN Corp.