Skinning changes in CS 2.1

I've heard that there have been some changes to skinning in CS 2.1, so I was wondering whether or not this tutorial (Stuart Celarier) mentioned in the FAQ is still relevant to 2.1 anymore? If not, is there any documentation or guidance as to how skinning works in CS 2.1? I'd like to make a custom blog skin for my site.

Good question Bob

I had to drop the skins I had as they threw errors was just about to embark on trying to get them working but I may wait and see now as it would take me a long time to work it out myself

 

 

Oooops

 

Just found this Bob it might help

http://getben.com/archive/2006/08/08/Updating-CS2.0-Themes-for-CS2.1.aspx

 

I'll work though the destruction on the excellent blog post to see if I can get mine working again and let you know

 

 

Thanks for the heads up, but that's not really what I was looking for. I'd like to be able to create a brand new skin from scratch, and honestly, I just don't know where to start. I have no idea what elements are required of a skin, how its all put together, etc. Something like that would be really helpful.

Bob Yexley:

Thanks for the heads up, but that's not really what I was looking for. I'd like to be able to create a brand new skin from scratch, and honestly, I just don't know where to start. I have no idea what elements are required of a skin, how its all put together, etc. Something like that would be really helpful.

Getting started on a skin isn't as hard as it seems. The best places to start, in my opinion, are with a copy of the default skin or Jaxon Rice's developer skin, which provides most of the same functionality but has already gutted the original HTML in favor of some slimmer markup. Keep in mind that the dev skin hasn't been updated for CS 2.1 yet, but you can get the changes you need from the 2.1 default skin.

As for the actual skinning, it will take some tooling around to figure out what does what. Most things are named well enough that you can figure out what they do pretty easily. The majority of the process involves decorating what CS provides for you. 

good~

Bob Yexley:

Thanks for the heads up, but that's not really what I was looking for. I'd like to be able to create a brand new skin from scratch, and honestly, I just don't know where to start. I have no idea what elements are required of a skin, how its all put together, etc. Something like that would be really helpful.

Bob,

I hear you... it is very difficult to just go and create a skin from scratch.  From what I've found it is a trial and error thing more than anything learning how the whole process works since there is no real definitive resource to help walk you through the process.  I have been able to edit the default skins to a certain degree as well as editing a skin someone else designed to a degree.  From what I understand in the upcoming version of the CS application they are going to have some sort of skinning function built in so you can more easily customize the look of the site.

A good person to contact in regards to skinning from scratch is Nick from  nbdevelopment.  I use one of his themes on my site currently and the guy really knows his stuff.  He should be able to point you in the right direction or possibly help you design a skin.

   

I've spent this past week learning how to "Skin" community server and my recommendation is to use the "IE Developer Toolbar" or some similar toolbar for other browsers.

When you turn on the IE developer toolbar on a CS site, follow these instructions:

1. In the DOM toolbar at the bottom of the screen, click "Find -> Select Element by click"
2. Hover over any element you wish to find the CSS class for.
3. In the middle & right panes, you will see properties of that element and should tell you the element that you selected
4. If the element is something strange like "ASPx_element_c000_1, etc" then in the treeview in the left pane, just navigate to an element higher or lower.
5. When you find the element you're looking for (e.g. CommonSidebarItem), do a search for that element in your CSS files.

Personally I find modifying the "default" theme the easiest way to skin CS. I would recommend backing up these files before you change them.

You can pretty much get away with skinning the entire site without having to leave "\web\Themes\default\" with the exception of some top level files (e.g. default.aspx & favico).

Hope that helps!