Today has been hectic and I've got a bit of work to on some css and templates to make them work better with DNN3 and some cross browser issues that we're working on to make DNN more W3C compliant.  But I had to finish a project to a certain point where I can show client and it's been a bit tricky because it involves skinning the PA classifieds module, and working with clients request of having dark background, but making quick to load, easy to read... and can they have that car noise like on another site.. *sigh*.. it's a juggle I tell you.

Have got an article regarding the banners module ready to upload, the DNN3 skins are pretty much ready.  I think I might split one or two of them to have a choice of CSS installation, as we see more Firefox users, guess what, people rave about it, and I love how it looks, but throw away alot of creativity. Interesting how so many people give MS a hard time, yet they do tend to offer many more cool functions with the menu than FireFox will do, but if that's what people want, I'll deliver what I can, and leave the choices between the browsers as open as possible.

Very excited about the Forum that Chris Paterra is working on - Tam's forum might not make the final cut, but I've been working on the skinning of it, so it's beautifully integrated. Will have extra colours and options available but initially getting the first one finished.  The blogs and forum module is in the same folder, so I only have o skin the Gallery and Forum.  Trying to make it nice and tight and will replace a few of the icons. I've been skinning other modules too in preparation for DNN3 and can't wait for the new range of modules to become available. Seems like alot of developers are working hard at getting their modules into the new DNN infrastructure and namespacen environment.

I've been speaking with Armand (Nokiko) about his CSS stuff and on http://www.dnnbeta.com is where he's been testing it and it's looking pretty good but still a little way off finished. We've been talking about some topics I would have on a dedicated skinning site, because although my site does have lots of information, I would like to have a separate site that allows me to engage more people who also have alot to offer the ability to participate in a more intuitively named site - I mean xd really doesn't have any reference, but the name is cool - not many 2 letter domains around.

So, I'm hoping to have a few of my own questions answered, and finish these templates I've been working on and off with for last couple of weeks, some things don't just site right and I had a little more time to clean them up before submitting to vault again. I've had plenty of questions about CSS and it's behaviour, how and why some of the decisions in how it's organised have been made and I have no say in that part of it, but analysing the methods in which the CSS files works, really impresses me.

The skinning document I have been working on and it's no easy task.  I have had the liberty to add a few more images to make it easier to follow and hope that the information I pass on will be in the same good quality that we've seen prior to 3.  I still learn something new with DNN every single day. Considering it's been 373 days since skinning came out, I think the learning curve has plateaud a bit and it's now second nature to pickup a file and create a skin, but more importantly, letting me have more time to push designing DNN sites a little more and take an objective approach to working modules more in the design of a site.

As the next few weeks roll by, (madly rush by for some) I want to have each module covered with comparisons between 2 & 3 and how they can be tweaked.  And I'll have some more modules to review as I've been installing some on other sites and have another couple of gems to talk about.

And I'll also have the Snapsis engine people covered with all the skins converted to the Snapsis Engine - an excellent online CSS tool to help you quickly manage your site's look and feel with the magic wand. John Mitchell is a talented developer who has consistently kept this product in the market place by coming up with great ideas.

So another day, another day.... and I'm hoping to be able to bring you some good news tomorrow on any information that helps give a timeframe or indication on the next release of DotNetNuke, and I'm getting excited again, getting over the worn out sessions which have been experienced by some of the great coders and it's really a blessing the DotNetNuke community post their questions, bugs, enhancments, ideas, suggestion... anything on the forum as the core team are really working on gleaming over the information and I know some of the community posts have helped solve quite a few show stoppers.  Thank goodness for them.

So keep smiling.. I'm going to be sending out staggered lots of email, in the coming few days with some more information on some of the hidden treasures of our wonderful DotNetNuke 3 project.

Cheers and thanks for dropping in.

Nina Meiers