Yes, I do most of my skins in notepad++, you can use dreamweaver too or any other HTML editor.

There are 2 way to create a skin.

1. An HTML file which will be parsed by DNN to ASCX file (the actual skin).
2. You can directly create the ascx file, which is nothing more then a HTML file with some special DNN elements.

Both can be edited in all kinds of editors.

I don't kno of any special documentation, if you would be editing a skin in VS you would also use it's HTML editing capabilities, it's not much different in other programs.

Editing skins is not difficult, although some instructions where they tell you to use the sources version of DNN (which is complete nonsense BTW) to create a skin might give you that impression .

Here's some instructions some done with VS, but you can do the same with any HTML editor, a skin is HTML in principle.

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/B...

http://www.packtpub.com/article/creat...

HTH