One other thing I would add is that if you want to really speed up your skinning, bypass the whole HTML/XML parsing method and just work directly with the .ascx files. I've found it to be incredibly more efficient, and I can see the changes 'real time' as I save and refresh. Since I can have around 5+ projects running at any given time, I simply created a basic skin.ascx files that has all the control calls at the top and the tokens at the bottom with my standard DIV/Spans (HeaderDIV, NavDIV, ContentDIV, etc.). I copy this file along with my skin.css, skin.doctype.xml, and other files into the _default\skins\SkinName folder, then swap over and start editing using Notepad++. When I'm done, I create a new package (outlined in one of the stickies here) with all the edited files for backup and then move on to module installation, setup, etc.

In the beginning I too was very fustrated by the innefficiency of the whole HTML Parsing method but since I started editing the .ascx files directly, life has become much less stressful for me. I think they have some video tutorials on the method over at DNNCreative.com too (a subscription I highly reccomend, they have some very useful video tuts).

Hi

If you have so many  years of programming experience, why not make your own web based solutions that can take your ascx skinslet cleitn modify some thigns and resave as ascx file sto give them skin editing freedom

About your queston regardig adding css or js to the head you cna simply do that  in a server side code block or write a skinobject that does it, you can use a free module that will handle this for you as well

http://wnsinj.codeplex.com/

if you want to do in skinobject or serverside code block

'Find the placeholder control
            Dim objCSS As Control = Page.FindControl("CSS")

 If Not objCSS Is Nothing Then
                'First see if we have already added the <LINK> control
                Dim objCtrl As Control = Page.Header.FindControl(ID)

                If objCtrl Is Nothing Then

                    Dim skinpath As String = String.Empty
                    skinpath = CType(Me.Parent, Skin).SkinPath
                    Dim objLink As New HtmlLink()

                    objLink.Attributes("rel") = "stylesheet"
                    objLink.Attributes("type") = "text/css"
                    objLink.Href = skinpath + "mycssfile.css"
objCSSControls.AddAt(-1, objLink)

                End If

-- for a script you could do something like

Dim strScript = "<script src='{0}' type='text/javascript'></script>"
                    Dim objLiteral As New System.Web.UI.WebControls.Literal()
                    Dim skinpath As String = CType(Me.Parent, Skin).SkinPath
                    Dim strInput As String = String.Format(strScript, skinpath + Script)
                    End Select
                    objLiteral.Text = strInput
                    objCSS.Controls.AddAt(-1, objLiteral)

Armand Datema

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