You can acutally do the skins in html or in ascx. It doesn't matter, and it won't change the results.

If you look more closely, you'll see that DotNetNuke converts html skin files into ascx file before using them. If you are more comfortable with ascx, you can use it. Just stick to the principles that Lee outlined in the tutorials and you'll be find.

For the most part, you use [ and ] to surround objects in the html version and you use tags surrounded by < and > in the ascx versions. The html parts are the same. And, there are some header tags added to the ascx file.

You're right, its not that hard. Just replace the tokens with a few tags.

I found a quick but comprehensive resource on it here:
http://www.dotnetnukerocks.com/tabi...fault.aspx

Cheers!

AndyB

If you look at some existing .ascx skin files (and some come with the Snapsis menu), you can pretty much figure out what's going on and also the differences between the html and ascx versions. Remember, any html skin file will be converted to an ascx version when you install and use it.

Actually, I do have one further question. When I developed skins in HTML, I could open them up in visual studio and do the HTML / CSS while getting a live preview of what they would look like. Now when I open up the ascx file in VS, all I get is errors, such as:

"The class or CssClass value is not defined."
"Element 'Login' is not a known element. This can occur if there is a compilation error in the Web site, or the web.config file is missing."
"Unknown server tag 'Snapsis:Navmenu'"

The skin works just fine when uploaded to the site (Im developing on a local machine) and you can open the ascx / css file in VS and edit them to refresh in Internet explorer - but it just strikes me as a bit oldskool - I might as well be editing my CSS / Html in notepad!!

For now, Im developing the skins as HTML to get a preview of them, then converting to ascx before upload - any further tweaks can be done quite simply then. But surely there is a better way to do this?

Cheers,

AndyB

The easiest way is to just do the skin files in html, and upload them that way.