I am trying to learn to skin from scratch.  By from scratch I mean I do not know css already or asp.net.  I can create pages in dreamweaver, I used to use frontpage a little (way back when)  and am used to a graphical interface for doing this.  I understand html when looking at it and have a basic understanding of what css is and how it works.  What I don't understand is how to create a skin when I can't see the results as I create it.  I mean I can't even just open it in internet explorer to see how it looks because it has to be installed into dotnetnuke already to see if I am doing it right (right?).  It is kinda making the learning process dificult.  I understand that skinning isn't easy, especially if you are not already a css designer or a visual web developer person.  I have just about every tool on this pc that has been mentioned in the forum.  (photoshop, golive, dreamweaver, visual web developer, visual studio)  and a couple more, and I'm not sure which to use.  I'm begining to wonder if I should just use notepad since I won't be able to see the results of my work till I'm finished anyway.  Sorry if I am ranting a bit.  The main question is where shoudl I start?  Should I study css or asp first?  Do I make html or asx pages?  I feel like I'm missing some needed knowledge when I go through the tutorials I've found online, i.e I can create what they create going through the steps but am not really learning anything when I am done.  Any suggestions of where to start would be great.  Which software or technology should I tackle first (am thinking of doing one then the others instead of all at once now).  At this point my main purpose isn't even total skin design (I'll pay designers to do that and buy a custom or packaged skin)  I mainly want to be able to fix a couple errors on one of my bought skins and customize print pages for different areas of my site.  I would like to design my own skin one day but I think I am far from that and just want to feel like I am headed in the right direction.

I would agree with Sebastian on using dnncreative.com as a learning resource as Lee does a great job with his tutorials.  I would politely disagree though on starting with an HTML skin as it requires you to also grasp configuring an xml file and reparsing the skin to see your changes. I would just jump straight into editing one of the default ascx page skins along with its associated css file. I would copy one fo the default skin packages, rename it, and upload it to my portal.  I would apply my newly renamed skin to my portal and use it for learning.  I would make small, incremental changes to both the ascx file and its associated css file, save the files, refresh the page and observe the results. Truthfully, learning how to place some user controls within some html elements is not that difficult and is really a better teaching tool for learning not just html and css, but also some server side language.

One caveat is that you will probably break the skin a few times and dnn will complain about the problems and restore the default skin back to your portal.  No big deal, it's part of the learning curve. Just go back in to your ascx and css files and undo your last changes and reapply the skin.

And yes, you will need to have a dnn site installed and operational as their is no method or tool for creating, editing, and viewing your skin outside of a dnn installation.

Paul