Deploying a Subtext skin used to be one of the biggest annoyances with Subtext prior to version 2.5. The main problem was that you couldn’t simply copy a skin folder into the Skins directory and just have it work because the configuration for a given skin is centrally located in the Skins.config file. In other words, a skin wasn’t self contained in a single folder. With Subtext 2.5, this has changed. Skins are fully self contained and there is no longer a need for a central configuration file for skins. What this means for you is that it...
This is my third post about Skinning in Subtext. Previously I talked about some breaking changes. Then I gave a high level overview of skinning in Subtext. In this post I want to mention one new feature for those who use custom skins. Subtext 1.9 actually reduces the the number of pre-packaged skins that come with it out of the box. That’s right, we got rid of the skins that screamed, "Hey! I was designed by a developer who wears plaid pants with flannel shirts!". Over time, we hope to add more polished designs. Of course we don’t want to leave developers with custom...
In my previous post, I outlined some minor changes to the skinning model for Subtext. In this post, I will give a high level overview of how skinning works in Subtext. Subtext renders a Skin by combining a set of CSS stylesheets with a set of .ascx controls located in a specific skin folder. If you look in the Skins directory for example, you might see a set of folders like this. Skin Template A common misperception is that each folder represents a Skin. In fact, each folder represents something we call a Skin Template, and can...
With the Subtext 1.9 release just around the corner, this is probably a good time to highlight some minor, but important, changes to skinning in Subtext. We made some breaking changes to Skins.config file format to make the naming more consistent with the purpose. There was a lot of confusion before. The following is a snippet from a pre-Subtext 1.9 Skins.config file. <?xml version="1.0"?>
<SkinTemplates xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<Skins>
<SkinTemplate SkinID="RedBook"
Skin="RedBook"
...