I am new to DNN, I read the Skinning guide. I think I understood most of it, but the only thing I am no clear is how do actual design a skin.

I downloaded a free skin from the Internet to see how it was built. I opened the HTML file but it only shows the tokens for DNN, it does not show styling. If am designing a skin how do I see what am doing or how to assign the style.

Thank you,

Gus G.

Thanks,

I am using VS  2008 as my HTML editor. I downloaded a free skin, look at the HTML file of the skin, it does not have any reference to the CSS file.

My question is how does DNN know how to create the ASCX file and map the CSS classes if there is no reference in the original HTML file.

Thank you,

Gus

VS2008 is a perfectly fine editor (and perhpas even a bit of overkill if you're only doing skinning).  The JavaScript support in VS2008 can come in especially handy if you create JS-enhanced skins.

As far as "HTML versus ASCX", the skin creation process dictates that you define your skin and skin objects using HTML (you create a "pseudo-skin").  When you upload your HTML-based skin using the DNN skin upload interface, DNN parses the HTML and creates the final ASCX file for you.  Why?  It does this in order to better support your skin across multiple versions of DNN.

Example:  Let's say you had started making skins a couple of years ago and created a skin for DNN 4.02 that uses a certain skin object.  As of DNN 4.9 (two years later), that skin object (the object's rendered code and/or the way it is referenced by DNN in the ASCX file) may have changed quite a bit.  By creating a "pseudo-skin" in HTML and letting DNN convert this to ASCX, your skin can often work across multiple versions of DNN despite changes to the DNN skin objects.  In short, each version of DNN knows how to implement the skin for itself so you don't have to create a new version of your skin every time a new version of DNN is released.

Hope that clears things up a little-
-mamlin