So I recently started looking at DotNetNuke as a CMS for my website development and Ive been doing some reading all day about the whole skinning aspect of it and I had a couple questions.

Q1. So from what I understand and be sure to correct me if i'm wrong. When developing a skin in Dotnetnuke its always a good idea to create your site as an html site with all the content then cut it up to suit. 
So you create a skin which essentially is the Layout for the site then you create containers which I believe is a placeholder for a module? So basically if i design a website and i know i want a news feed to be in a particular place i should create a container called news and style it how i want and that would be my container correct?

Q2. So i have my website the content between the body tags is what makes up the skin file which can be acsx or htm. Css is placed in a separate file to be loaded. What about JavaScript? where does that go? If i wanted to add flash content to my site where do i include my JavaScript files.

Q3. From what i read having the contenPane is mandatory to the for your skin. Is there anything else that is mandatory to create a skin? Or is it simply a Skin, a container and style sheets?

Ok so i think i understand most of what you said. Im still confused on how to insert JavaScript into my skin are you saying my options are to use the module u gave me or to put the link tag at the top of the page? Any who I created my first skin and for the most part it is working fine. I think i understand the whole Container vs Skin so thanks for the clarification. Right now i need to do some research on how to style the tokens such as the menu and search then learn how to create modules. If i run into any more problems i will be sure to post but if someone could clear up the whole JavaScript issue that would be appreciated.