I am a total newbie to skinning, and I bought the beginning dotnetnuke 4.0 book.  there is a place where he created a basic skin from one of the templates, and after reading the skinning guide on the site as well, I though I had a good understanding of how things worked.  Unfortunately, there are pretty significant differences in the files mentioned in the book, versus the files in the newest version of dotnet, so I'm not making very good progress. (i.e. menu versus nav etc...)  Are there any better books out there so that I can keep learning?

thx

Beginning DotNetNuke Skinning and Design has shipped, but it's woefully out of date, being published almost a month ago.  :)

You might look at DNNCreative.com, the new stuff is up to date.  It's a worthwhile subscription for skinning, and many other DNN functions.  The lastes two issues have especially good current videos.  I regretfully have to recommend staying away from Skincovered, since Nina's departure from the core group there's been a marked drop in new materials.  But the older stuff is still valid for the most part.  One good resource is the default skins that shipped and installed with DNN.  They use current tags, such as [NAV] instead of [MENU].  And when you get stuck, ask for help here.

Jeff

I wish i would have purchased a DnnCreative subscription instead of a skincovered subscription. 

You'll find many helpfull people in the skinning forum and there are a lot of free skins to look at for examples.  Check out ThinkofDesign.com too.