DotNetNuke tutorials, tips and tricks

Saturday, January 28, 2006

DotNetNuke Skin Testing

The CSS skin is complete it's very simple and light in size. What I wanted to share with you today is an idea I came up with for testing CSS skins.

The problem with a CSS skin is you don't quite know how it is going to react with various browsers, after a period of time you can anticipate certain errors and fix them with hacks, but when you add DotNetNuke modules to the page this can potentially also cause problems.

I've created a quick testing environment exactly for this.

I've created a localhost installation of DotNetNuke which contains several pages. It contains pages to test the scrolling of lengthy text, short text for no scrolling, and no text to check the menu still displays correctly.

I've also created several pages where I have installed the various standard core modules that come with DotnetNuke to test if any of the modules cause any errors within the CSS skin layout.

We can now take advantage of the DotNetNuke portal environment:

Apply the standard DNN-Blue skin to this portal.
Create a portal template of this portal and export all of the content and modules.
Create a new portal with the name of your skin that you wish to test.
When creating the portal apply the portal template that you have just created so that all of the content and modules are automatically applied & apply the new skin that you wish to test.
You now have an instant test environment for your new skin in a matter of seconds!

You can easily view how your new skin interacts with the modules and quickly get a feel for any alterations you need to make within your skin.

The other advantage is that you can now compare page file sizes. - You can compare the exact same page layout and content within the various portals. So you can double check that your CSS layout skin is indeed of a smaller file size than the DNN-Blue skin!


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If you are looking for tutorials regarding DotNetNuke and skinning, here are 16 videos to get you started: DotNetNuke Skin Tutorial Videos.

DNN Creative Magazine provides DotNetNuke tutorials, articles, reviews all for the DotNetNuke web designer. An issue is released each month. Stats: 86 Videos & 5 MP3 Interviews

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