Yes Armand I agree with you but at the same time and I myself being a Web Designer for many many years understand those headaches of cross browser compatibility (along with those MAC issues but that’s another discussion in itself as I’m a PC) But seriously though TO US the Designers for any Portal type applications WE KNOW what it takes to make a skin but to some clients, they don't have a clue to what we go through and to them it looks like pretty pictures.
Don't you just love when you get those ones who say..."Why can't you just do this this way or have that place in this spot of the screen" and etc.
And when you present it to them and you give them a final price there's always that "STICKER SHOCK" and if nobody's seen a Client's mouth drop open then they've probably haven't been working in a face to face agile development environment long enough. I too enjoy the fact that I can go find a pre-built skin instead of spending hours on the research of cross browser compatibility. But rest assured, it never fails that the client will always want changes to even those premade skins... and then when you get into the skin, you find out that it was POORLEY designed or that it’s a NESTED TABLE NIGHTMARE or worse yet you find that it’s a NESTED DIV nightmare where editing the stylsheet is like Hit and Miss when trying to align those pixels again. There's also those instances where the client re-thought what the perceived is not in actuality what they really wanted. They See... They Change and We the Designer charge them again. I only find this to be the case with some SKINS where if you have to make modifications that it’s a coding layout Nightmare.
All I’m pointing out is that all of us are DNN specialists and are still thankful for DNN being OPEN SOURCE because it’s actually putting food on the table for some of us. If we design a skin or a "color skin package" that’s actually worth $80.00 dollars, then it should be worth that. But I’m only concerned that "Quality" Matches the price. Do I really need 31 flavors of skin only to find out that a picky client said "Well it’s a shade off my Branding colors" (That actually happened to me and if it hasn't happened to you yet.... trust me it will and you'll almost fall out of your chair.) There have been numerous times I’ve had to scan a client’s business card or brochures and pull the colors from that and proceed to match. OR go to their old website CSS and pull from that.
If you really wanted to package a skin with an assortment of colors, we should at least have the option of just purchasing that color as any Designer with Photoshop can alter the hues through batch automation and BINGO your Blue site is now Purple or whatever your clients branding is. And i sit after approval and think to myself "I just spent $80.00 dollars on ONE layout that has like 50 or 60 rainbow colors in a skin where i only needed 1 modified color." WOW!
Sorry if I offended any fellow skin designers. I understand and aware we all work very hard. That’s not my intention of starting this post... its mainly on emphasis on Quality and Needs of the designer or client truly matching the final price and giving us the option of selecting the Package of 31 flavors or just one color option.
But you have to admit.... there are some skins out there that don't deserve to be $80.00 dollars. Especially if its not a package of assorted colors.
It was just an observation on my part. There's price Hikes on everything these days. Even the skins are affected. Its just the times we're living in I guess.