Hi Lee, I meand to say "skinning" in the subject box above! I have heard that working with skins for DNN 5.x is easier and better. But I can't find any documentation on the subject. Where can a person find some help on this topic? I'd love to see a video from you on this topic, but I'm really looking for something to get started with now. Thanks!

I fixed your subject.

ALL of the tutorials that we have here are suitable for skinning DotNetNuke 5.x. There are some changes, and I expect that there will soon be tutorials for that. In the meantime, there is a webinar archived at DotNetNuke.com done by Nik Kalyani and it focusses on newer features in the 5.x "Skinning Engine." There are also some blog entries, mainly by Timo Breumelhof on the subject.

For me, that biggest help is sitting down with a skin and seeing how things are done. Take the Minimal Extropy skin from the 5.1.1 distribution and look it over carefully. Also look over the sample pages created with the default 5.1.1 site. You'll see how "those guys" did it.

Hello,

As Joe says, all of the tutorials here will apply to version 5. Version 5 has just introduced an additional way of skinning a few enhancements, none of them are necessarily easier or better.

If you are new to skinning I would suggest you begin with Issue no 5 and 6 to get to grips with skinning. After that there are tutorials on CSS skinning and I would also recommend you view
DotNetNuke ASCX Skinning for Professional Skinners

This shows the methods to use for skinning the fastest and most efficient.

In the October issue I will be releasing some videos on how to package skins for DNN5 as these are slightly different, but, packaging a skin in the DNN4 format is still readable in DNN5 - and is actually easier - but you can look into that when I release the tutorial in October.

Thanks,

Hey guys,

I'm also trying to find some more specific information on the 'Best Practices' for skinning in DNN 5.x.   After watching Nik's videos, in particular, I'm interested to see if anyone has any info on using 1) "Super Stylesheets" as a starting template and 2) description/parameters/use of the new Widgets.

I've created CSS based skins for DNN 4 and there is good documentation (including on this site) for packaging manually created skins for DNN 5. 

However, DNN 5 seems to promise a simpler method for creating skins with the above mentioned additions, plus other enhancements such as jQuery - things that didn't exist in DNN4. 

Anyone out there who has used any of these new DNN5 feature that might be able to shed some light on the best way to do things.

Thanks,
~Chris

Stay tuned.  I'm sure that Lee will not disappoint us.

In the meantime, Nik's webinars are a good place to start.  Also Google around and look in the blogs at DotNetNuke.com.  There is some stuff.

In particular, the object form of the html skins looks helpful.

You might also want to take a look at the skins distributed with versions 5.x.  You'll find some ideas there, too.

Hello,

Yes I will be exploring the new features and creating some tutorials on them, i just wanted to get some basic DNN 5 tutorials done first so that we are all up to speed on the changes. I'm looking into the new DNN5 skin techniques and will create some tutorials as soon as I can, thanks

Great, Lee. As all of your tutorials, I'll look forward to what you put together on skinning.
I'm hacking away on a DNN 5 skin at the moment, so I'll be happy to add in anyything I've learned . . .if you don't end up covering it all anyway.
Thanks, ~Chris

Thanks, If you come up with any particular tips or elements you think I should be exploring, please send me an e-mail with details and I will make sure that I cover it, thanks,