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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Why doesnWhy doesn't 5.0 install skins which contain the skin and containers like 4.x used to?
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12/29/2008 9:23 PM
 
Charles Nurse


Charles Nurse's Avatar

Charles Nurse's Avatar

Joined: 2/9/2004
Posts: 3652

Salama wrote

The skin installer in 5.0 takes a LOT more time to install skins ( I am assuming this is for 'legacy')

1- You have to click on many screens. One time for the skins and another for the containers.

2- For legacy skins which do not contain a manifest, I have to unzip all the skins which contains the skins.zip and containers. Unzip the two in their own folders.

Rename the zips (foe each skin and container) for each skin set to a proper names and install each seperately. In 4.x, I could do all this in one click. The installer would install everything in a single batch.

OK so why did 5.0 remove this facility!? I have tens of skins to install and doing all this manually is going to take me hours!

I am not sure what lack of manifest file means but if I was able to to do this easily in 4.x, then why not also in 5.0? Put a checkbox like 'install in 4.x mode' and replicate the same 4.x ease of installation.

 

The new installer can install combination legacy skin packages ie a zip file where the zip contains two zips (Skins.zip and Containers.zip). You do not have to unzip anything before installation

There are a number of reasons why the changes were made.

  1. Legacy skins do not contain manifests - so uninstall is a crapshoot of skins have shared files
  2. The new installation process allows skinners to package skins, containers and skinobjects in a single distributable package - the legacy system did not allow this.
  3. Commercial (and non commercial) skinners and module developers wanted a way to identify License acceptance and Release Notes during installation

Support for legacy skins in this new system was a challenge as they do not have manifests - and therefore it is not easy to detect whether a manifest-less package is a legacy skin, a legacy container, a legacy combi-skin-container or a bad package. 

It was felt that the benefits of the new system warranted the approach taken rather than continuing to support the legacy (4.x) way, which has its limitations.

Charles Nurse
Chief Architect
Evoq Content Team Lead,
DNN Corp.

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12/30/2008 10:30 AM
 
Paul Scarlett


www.tressleworks.ca
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 493

As Charles mentioned, the issue of the legacy skins and containers is the lack of a manifest file.

I have written a VBscript to convert legacy skin, container, skin and container zip files.  The script unzips the files and then creates a minimal manifest and finally rezips the files along with the new manifest.   The new file can then be processed by DNN V5.0. 

Give it a try ... please note this is a VBScript file and must be run from the command line.  see the readme file in the download zip file.  

The script can be found at www.tressleworks.ca under free downloads/others.

Paul.
 
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12/30/2008 5:37 PM
 
Timo Breumelhof


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www.40fingers.net
Joined: 2/9/2006
Posts: 4430

Legacy skins are fully supported also the combined packges (skin and container), but DNN 5.0.0 is case sensitive, the zips inside the main zip must be named Skin.css / Container.css or the installation will fail.

The change for this has already been checked in, so it should be solved in DNN 5.0.1
 
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12/30/2008 7:47 PM
 
Andy Schmidt

www.Anamera.com
Joined: 7/13/2008
Posts: 33

>> the zips inside the main zip must be named Skin.css / Container.css <<

You mean they must be named Skin.zip and Container.zip?

And the key is that the filenames must start with a Capital letter S and C?

Sorry - but having case sensitive file names is pretty "weird", unless when you try to emulate Unix.
 
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12/30/2008 8:28 PM
 
Tony Henrich


Joined: 12/15/2008
Posts: 838

 

 

After reading the messages I tried the skin installer again on a legacy combination zip. After opening the zip, it warned that the skin didn't have a manifest file and the page displayed three radio buttons, skin, container and none. Intuitively I chose none because it's a combo zip. It's not a skin and it's not a container zip. It's a combination of both.  It errored again.

I tried the skin option and it did install the skin AND the container. So this is confusing, Nothing on the page tells me that the skin option is able to handle a combo zip. How about a combo option also?

So what is the None option used for?

There should have been a tool to upgrade legacy skins so these can be used in the batch installer.
 
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