Web Design

This tutorial demonstrate the ASCX method of DotNetNuke skinning. This is the method that the professional DotNetNuke skinners use as it is much quicker to build skins in this way.

We explain the concepts of DotNetNuke ASCX skinning, how to setup Visual Web Developer Express to enable the skin token attribute suggestions, how to use ASCX skin tokens, how to make quick edits to tokens and instantly see them on your DotNetNuke website, how to display two tokens of the same type - for instance two menus, how to use skinpath for images, how to view the attributes that are available for a skin token, how to speed edit CSS code, how to quickly create additional skins using the ASCX method and instantly view them within your DotNetNuke installation, and finally how to work with ASCX Containers.

The videos cover:

• Video 1 - Introduction, Pros and Cons of ASCX Skinning
• Video 2 - Introduction to ASCX Skin Code and Setup in VWD Express
• Video 3 - How to Edit The ASCX Tokens, Configuring the Search Token
• Video 4 - How to Display 2 Nav Menus, How to Use SKINPATH for Images
• Video 5 - Skin CSS Code Speed Editing in ASCX skins
• Video 6 - Containers ASCX skinning

This is a special 34 page resource to help you learn how to use colors within CSS when designing your DotNetNuke skins.

The Color Reference Guide has been designed to give you a better idea of how the different color systems work, how to use the Hex Triplet system and the 3 character Hex CSS Shorthand.

This book comes in pdf format so you can easily refer back to it at your leisure.

This tutorial demonstrates how you can use the styles drop down list in the FCK editor to format the text.

Using the styles drop down list allows you to quickly apply CSS classes from your skin.css file and should help to ensure that administrators do not use bad practices for styling text, such as using font tags.

The videos contain:

• Video 1 - Styling the Background of the Style Dropdown List in the FCK Editor
• Video 2 - List of Available Styles for the FCK Editor
• Video 3 - Dynamic Styles in the FCK Editor
• Video 4 - How to Create Custom Styles
• Video 5 - Creating Class Styles in the Style Dropdown List
• Video 6 - How to Customise Block Quotes with Different Classes

Total Time Length: 48mins

This tutorial demonstrates how to create your own HTML templates for the FCK Editor in DotNetNuke.

HTML templates are really useful for adding repetitive content into a page; they can give you a starting point when adding content to the page, you do not need to start from scratch, you can simply select a template as a starting point and then edit the content within the template. This will help to reduce errors created by content editors.

The videos contain:

• Video 1 - Introduction, the FCKtemplates.xml file
• Video 2 - How to Create a Custom HTML Template

Total Time Length: 16mins

This tutorial demonstrates how to alert content administrators when adding incorrect HTML content to a DotNetNuke portal.

Alert styles is a new concept we have been working on for ensuring that the content administrators of a DotNetNuke portal add content using good practices.

Time Length: 10mins

This tutorial demonstrates how to configure the content area in the FCK Editor to display the same text styles as your skin.css file.

Configuring the FCK Editor in this way makes it easier to edit the content in your site and ensure that it is correctly styled.

The tutorial shows how to solve problems such as unreadable text when editing with skins that have a dark background colour, as well as how to style the Link Gallery, Image Gallery and Custom Options FCK Editor pages.

The videos contain:

• Video 1 - Introduction, Configuring the Default Editor Display Mode
• Video 2 - Fixing Text Display Problems, Creating a Custom FCK Body ID
• Video 3 - Styling the Image Gallery, Link Gallery, Custom Options FCK Editor Pages
• Video 4 - Configuring an Instance, Module or Portal FCK Editor Display Mode

Total Time Length: 31mins

This tutorial shows how to change the skin of the FCK Editor.

The tutorial demonstrates how to download a new FCK Editor skin and upload it to your DotNetNuke portal. We then show you how to edit the web.config file settings to allow the new skin to be selected within the FCK Editor. Finally we demonstrate how to apply the new skin to the FCK Editor in DotNetNuke.

The videos contain:

• Video 1 - Introduction, Uploading FCK Skins, Making the Skins Available
• Video 2 - Applying the FCK Editor Skin to the DotNetNuke Portal

Total Time Length: 13mins

This tutorial demonstrates the steps to create a printable view of your web pages, so a user can simply go to the file menu in their browser window and select print. This presents the user with a printable, user friendly, readable page.

The tutorial shows you how to create a print stylesheet for your DotNetNuke skin, how to format the layout of the print stylesheet, how to change the text font so that it is suitable for reading when printed out, how to set the width of the stylesheet, how to format links, and also how to display the full URL of a link next to a text link so that it can be viewed on the printed page. Finally, we demonstrate how to select which content to make available for printing and how to remove content not required for printing, this is an essential technique for removing elements such as the menu and login links which are not required for a printed page.

The videos cover:

• Video 1 - Introduction, Considerations, Setup
• Video 2 - Current Print Preview, Creating the Print CSS
• Video 3 - Remove Elements from the Printed Page
• Video 4 - Repositioning the Content, Removing Content Styling
• Video 5 - Styling the Content Pane, Re-styling the Headings
• Video 6 - How to Style Links for the Printed Page
• Video 7 - Styling Unordered lists, Method Two for Print Stylesheets using Javascript

Total Time Length: 50mins

The CSS reference book is a special 112 page resource to help you learn how to use CSS for your DotNetNuke skins.

The CSS reference book demonstrates all of the currently supported CSS properties used within CSS 2.1.

The book comes in pdf format, so this makes it easy to quickly search for a CSS property and find the information you require, complete with examples and images.

Dark Ritual is a free, tableless, fixed width, XHTML compliant website. This skin comes with 2 layouts in 2 versions:

• Index 3 pane skin with text header
• Index 3 pane skin with logo
• Admin 1 pane skin with text header
• Admin 1 pane skin with logo

It also comes with 3 containers:

• h1 title
• h2 title
• transparent, no title container