This is because you are using in-line styles. When referencing images from style attributes using url(), the browser expects to find the images in the location relative to where the style attribute is defined. In this case, it would be from default.aspx which is in the root of your website.

You can either change the in-line style references to include the path to your skin folder, or move the style definitions to skin.css in the same folder as your skin. You can then put your images in the skin folder and they will show up. Putting the style definitions in a stylesheet is the better solution IMO. There is a third option involving putting inline code, but it is not a good practice so I won't go into detail about it here.

Nik

Hi Nik,
thank you very much for your quick answer.

I understand what you explained to me and so i started all over again.
I duplicated the dnn-blue skin in the _default-folder, renamed it.

I replaced the old part

<tr height="129">
<td background="HeaderTop.png" align="left" colspan="5" valign="top" style="padding-left: 8px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 13px; padding-top: 6px; font-family: Verdana, Arial"> TestSkin</td>
</tr>

with 

and added also

 .skinheadertop 
{
padding-left: 8px; 
font-weight: bold; 
font-size: 13px; 
padding-top: 6px; 
font-family: Verdana, Arial; 
height: 129px;
background-image: url(HeaderTop.png);
}

to my skin.css that is in the same folder with the images and the .ascx.

I selected the skin and looked in the preview, but it still won't work!
Then i had a look at the sourcecode and saw that there was added the following line

<link id="_DNN_Portals__default__skins_myfirstskin_" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/DNN/Portals/_default//skins/myfirstskin/skin.css" />

and this can't be ok with the doubled slash in "/DNN/Portals/_default//skins/myfirstskin/skin.css". Is there maybe something not configured ok? But i only installed the Starterkit selected the dnn-template and set the ntfs-permissions.

I also read that the skin.css in the skin-folder is linked dynamically. 
But if it is linked during runtime i have in the Visual Studio the problem that the css is not know and displayed in the designer! Is there a way to solve this?

Another thing i saw is that in the sourcecode in the first line is written

<%

@ Control language="vb" CodeBehind="~/admin/Skins/skin.vb" AutoEventWireup="false" Explicit="True" Inherits="DotNetNuke.UI.Skins.Skin" %>

and the CodeBehind-URL is underlined in the designer and it says "the file is not found" but i have the same problem on my pc at work!

I am using dnn 4.4.1.; WinXP Prof, Visual Studio 2005

Thank you for your answer

Tom

<tr>
<td align="left" class="skinheadertop" colspan="5" valign="top">TestSkin</td>
</tr>