Entries for August 2008

I often hear from clients or people I do training for asking about the best tools for DotNetNuke skinning. While the question is appropriate to beginners in DotNetNuke skinning, it should be clear for someone who has done skinning before. The answer is “There is none”. If you’re new to DotNetNuke skinning, learning about the appropriate tools for your development is important. But what’s more important is the process of getting the job done quickly and effectively. DotNetNuke skinning isn’t ha...

I don’t know about you, but I since I started with web development (or skinning and UI design), the following web development tools have been my best friends. Not only do these tools helpful for DotNetNuke developers and designers, they’re also widely used by many others in the web community. 1. Web Developer Toolbar A simple plug-in provides a rich tool set for web development. I enjoy using the CSS live editing to the file through the browser and see it changes before I make final update to ...

When it comes to usability, many people often see issues in transforming their designs into a DotNetNuke-based web site. DotNetNuke built-in features might prevent people from taking control over their design mock-ups. A few examples are the login, register, and user profile pages. Also, if you’re using terms and privacy default content from the framework, you might run into layout issues. It uses the current skin design and applies to the control you want to load on the page. A common example ...

Working on many projects (both custom and commercial modules from third parties), I've often seen repeated mistakes that developers made in module development. I decided to write a short blog post to share a bit experience about dont's in module development with the hope to make the job easier for others. 1. The <br /> tag Issue: One of the most common (bad) habits that developers do is to use <br /> tag to create padding between the two elements. This is not an ideal approach beca...