Skinning

DotNetNuke Core Team all up in my Grill

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 | CSS, DotNetNuke, Improving Code, Programming, Skinning, Web Development, XHTML | No Comments

Man, I’ve been getting quite a bit of attention from the DNN Core Team the past couple days.

I just wanted to say I appreciate the feedback and I’m interested in the advancements and improvements being considered in upcoming versions of the platform. Thanks for putting up with my candor and overt angst in these past few bitch posts.

I’d be particularly interested in knowing about any plans to move forward with .Net 3.5 and its ability to allow designers to define all the HTML in the controls. I’d like to see DNN reach the point where all rendered HTML is controlled by the front-end engineer, and we can achieve W3C compliance and simpler control over themes and content generation.

DotNetNuke Default.CSS: Seriously??

Monday, June 2nd, 2008 | Artemis Solutions Group, CSS, DotNetNuke, Improving Code, Programming, Ranting, Skinning, Venting, Web Development, Work Stuff | 14 Comments

Here’s another one of the myriad of reasons that I am displeased with DotNetNuke as a web development platform:

The “default.css” included with all installs of DNN has this (and more CSS for other stuff like it) in it:
H1
{
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica;
font-size: 20px;
font-weight: normal;
color: #666644;
}

H2
{
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica;
font-size: 20px;
...

(I think you get the point)

Excuse me, DotNetNuke core team, but isn’t stuff like this up to the Designers and Developers? Why are you including a default stylesheet with definitions for HTML elements that would be used by Web developers? I can’t tell you how many times default.css has left me absolutely baffled about the smallest details not being quite right according to our design specs because it has these random “defaults” in it. It’s not up to DNN Core team to define my font families, sizes, and colors. And seriously, stop using pixel font sizing.

It’s becoming clearer to me almost on a daily basis, that DNN is not the right CMS for a professional Web shop to be using. They probably have this default.css for people who don’t make skins or know anything about Web development. And if you remove default.css, it completely hoses all the Admin pages and Control Panel. It takes way too much time and effort to figure out what’s removable and what’s not, and you always end up surprised when some random element isn’t positioned or styled correctly later on down the road.

It’s time for us to move on to a CMS that gives the developer full control over the theme, and not put a bunch of defaults in it that you can’t get rid of. 

CFD Smile Goes Live!

Monday, November 12th, 2007 | CSS, Clients, Code, Custom Development, Design, Portfolio, Portfolio - Freelance, Programming, Projects, SEO, Semantic XHTML, Skinning, Web Development, Websites, Work Stuff, XHTML | No Comments

Well, my first side project has finally gone live! After months of hard work, I now unveil www.cfdsmile.com to you. We wanted to bring out the services right up front for best emphasis, and lots of heavy stock photo usage for high impact.

We also worked with a professional web content writer to make the content more effective and search-engine optimized. This, coupled with semantic HTML, CSS, and google web master tools, will help this site rank high in keywords for Texas Dental Services.

So, please visit the site if you get a chance, and enjoy!

About the Author

I'm a real Web Developer from East Lansing, MI. I like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, last.fm, 37signals, flickr, Getting Real, dogs, bikes, social life, ROWE, speaking my mind, UX design, dinner dates, dancing, movies, indie rock music, hipsters, scene kids, bars, food co-ops, drums, writing, books, organic food, eco-friendly, progressive thinkers, the secret message of Jesus, and lots of other things.