Disclaimer:  I am very new to DNN, so I will appear very stupid here, or perhaps like a stroke victim, trying to speak intelligently but only able to say "That....THINGY....won't work!". So that said, here we go.

I am trying to create my first skin. I'm having horrid problems with SolPartMenu.  It flat out doesn't seem to work at all.  In fact finding ANY decent information anywhere on SolPartMenu - even at www.solpart.com, doesn't seem to be easy.    

Background:  I'm reading the Wrox book "DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals".  A trifle dated I realize, but one would not think that the attributes listed there for SolPartMenu would ALL be different now, yes?  I have also read the skinning .pdf for  4.0.3 on this site. (just to save someone the time of suggesting I read something first)  I am running DNN 4.0.3 on IIS 5 on my machine, so I am modifying skin files directly in the file structure of my site rather than zipping and uploading.  I am using an HTML skin rather than an .ascx at the moment.  I parse each time I modify.  Judging by the messages I get, there are no errors.

Changes I make to the skin.css and the classes defined there for SOLPARTMENU, work like a charm.  Any settings I make in the skin.xml don't do a thing.  I have tried numerous things, all to no avail.  For the messages below you will see I even tried setting the separatecss attribute to false in the xml, again with no results:  

Loaded package level attribute file: Skin.xml
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Loading skin object for token SOLPARTMENU: Admin/Skins/SolPartMenu.ascx
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Processing token: [SOLPARTMENU]

Token is skin object: Admin/Skins/SolPartMenu.ascx

Token found in attributes file: [SOLPARTMENU]

Formatting token attribute: separatecss="false"

Formatting token attribute: forecolor="fuschia"

Formatting token attribute: menueffects="true"

Formatting token attribute: MenuEffects-MenuTransition="AlphaFade"

Formatting token attribute: MenuEffects-MenuTransitionLength="10"

Formatting token attribute: forecedownlevel="true"

Formatting token attribute: backcolor="#755846"

Formatting control statement: <dnn:SOLPARTMENU runat="server" id="dnnSOLPARTMENU" separatecss="false" forecolor="fuschia" menueffects="true" MenuEffects-MenuTransition="AlphaFade" MenuEffects-MenuTransitionLength="10" forecedownlevel="true" backcolor="#755846" /> (these are all settings I set in the skin.xml file so I know it's being read and rendered at SOME level)
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Formatting registration directive: <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="SOLPARTMENU" Src="~/Admin/Skins/SolPartMenu.ascx" %>

So, is my approach/understanding of ths process just wrong?  Do I need to view this a different way?  Am I just a complete dork who's out in left field?? (don't answer that one guys!  Be kind! :)
Are these 2 files mutually exclusive?  Can I set ALL the attributes allowed by SolPartMenu, in the skin.css?? (wouldn't seem so, but, hey)  Does the parse process simply ignore the skin.xml if a skin.css is present?  As far as I can see the only thing that stops the skin.css from parsing and being applied is if it is physically removed from the skin directory.  It certainly won't stop it applying it if you set "separatecss" attribute to false int the skin.xml.  What, pray, IS the *#*^# .xml file FOR???  GRRRRRR!!!!!

Gee...can you tell I'm about ready to rip my hair out?

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated. 

Don't forget that there could be caching enabled on the server so try Ctrfl-F5 to force reloading your skin .css. Also sometimes there's caching somewhere else in the network (your firewall, their firewall, etc) so I prefer working locally verifying that all my changes work and then uloading the skin again.

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I just checked the code, no processing is done on the .css file.  The reason DW is telling you it is updated is because it re-writes the file to disk. The reason it does this on a re-Parse is becasue it uses the same code as the upload to process all the ".htm", ".html", ".ascx", and ".css" files in the directory.

Even on a new upload the .css file is not changed, it is only written to disk.

The skin.xml file is for setting default attributes on controls, but if the control in question also uses css classes for it's style (like the Solpart menu) then those will be the actual values applied in the browser when the html is finally rendered there.

"Again I will ask, can ALL the dynamic stuff like alphafade, etc. be set via the .css?"

Yes, if it has a class assigned to the element, or an ID that you can use for a css selector, then you can get to it all through the CSS directly.  As for Solpart, I don't use it too much, but I'm pretty sure that everything you want to do can be set in the CSS file directly.

Also, keep in mind that the dynamic effect that you used as an example is Microsoft IE only, and will not render in other browsers.

My advice is to stick to working with the .ascx file and the .css file if you want to cut down on the "unknown" things that may or may not happen when the skin parsing takes place.

You should even be able to open that .ascx file in dreamweaver, it is mostly html anyway.

 

 

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