Hi,

I have been looking at Themes and Skins today and now resonably understand
how they work at a ground level. But I have a couple of questions.

1. ) StyleSheetTheme

I dont understand where this would be used. As I understand it the
precidence is like this.

StyleSheetTheme
ControlProperties
Theme

So I am at a bit of a loss as how and where one would use a StyleSheetTheme
over a Theme.


2.)  Design Support for Skins

No Intellisense exists for this, so its a bit like stepping back in time to
a life before intellisense existed for CSS Development, you have to either
Know the properties or do it first on the page and just copy it accross.
This to me is a little archaic. Perhaps someone has a different view ?


3.)  Using CSS with or Vs Themes

What strikes me here is that the properties of a control do not address all
the layout properties of Css. So you cant really get away without doing both
if you are to have full seperation between application and layout. This
makes things rather complex in designing a web site where all these design
abstractions are being used.

I was wondering if there is someone here who has sufficient experience with
using all three to come up with some usefull and hopefully simplistic advice
which can direct a developer on at least how to approach the task without
getting tied up in all sorts of knots.


Many Thanks.

It is like this..

             1)

              if you set the theme Property to certain theme, then you cannot override the properties which you have set using the skin for 

              the corresponding Theme. say for eg. I have one theme, named "Standard" in which one skin associated with label, in the label skin I

               set backcolor to red.

               Now I take one aspx page set theme = Standard" then them associated with label skin with back ground color appers

               Now if i try to override the backColor propery of the label available in the form and run the page then label appears in red only.

               That means if "you set the Theme property, you cannot override the properties which you set in the corresponding skin.

               and also other properties which are not set in the skin you can modify them."

                               if you set the StyleSheetTheme property you can override the properties which you set in the corresponding skin.

          

 

             

Thank you for your response.

 I already understand this. My question was really more of  approach. So far no one has managed to reply in terms of a managed approach to using both.

 

 

1. ) StyleSheetTheme

So I am at a bit of a loss as how and where one would use a StyleSheetTheme over a Theme.

I haven't found StyleSheetThemes useful either, However Themes are quite useful since they provide Skins. Default Skins (I emphasize "Default") are a welcome addition to ASP.NET 2.0 as they allow us to hook CSS Selectors into ASP.NET controls, something that was difficult to do in previous versions of .NET.

2.)  Design Support for Skins

No Intellisense exists for this, so its a bit like stepping back in time to a life before intellisense existed for CSS Development, you have to either Know the properties or do it first on the page and just copy it accross.This to me is a little archaic. Perhaps someone has a different view ?

• Open up Visual Studio, Select "Tools", Select "Options"
• Expand "Text Editor", Select "File Extensions", enter extension "Skin", select "User User Control", select "Add"
• You should now have intellisense.

3.)  Using CSS with or Vs Themes

What strikes me here is that the properties of a control do not address all the layout properties of Css. So you cant really get away without doing both if you are to have full seperation between application and layout. This makes things rather complex in designing a web site where all these design abstractions are being used.

ASP.NET Styling attributes offer a simple interface for developers to make a website look good, these styling attributes are often rendered into undesirable inline CSS. If your web design is done professionaly then you would probably want a CSS based design that uses external StyleSheets. CSS is the industry standard, it's flexible, complex, robust, platform / language independent, and expanding. ASP.NET Styling attributes are most often used by developers who aren't familiar with CSS.

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-Adam Kahtava [http://adam.kahtava.com]

Great answers, thank you.

 I know its not part of this post, but as you seem to know what your talking about do you know if it is possible to set the rendered Form ID for a content page being used with a master page. I have not yet found an  answer to this, normally the default ID is rendered as 'aspnetform' I want to change this for each content page for css clarity.

 

Many Thanks