So many times when you sit down and start a new DotNetNuke skinning project, the first thing to do is to define your own CSS properties and values to override some of the default selectors from the default.css file in core DNN framework. I even created a little CSS template file I use on start of every skinning project I’m involved in.
The Experience team has been taking notes from conversations within the community for a while. It’s not we didn’t realize the CSS file needs improvement, but it’s how it should be implemented and corrected so it would help us to from making continuous changes for a while before newer approaches and techniques are introduced (CSS3).
Years ago when DNN was first created, those CSS selectors were there to help non-web designers to have something visually working right away after installing DNN. Over time, we learned newer techniques that help speed up sites performance, better organization of selectors to increase productivity when we collaborate with others and so on.
We, the Experience team, met bi-monthly to talk about issues that can help improving the experience within the community and the platform itself. There are many things we want to do to help improve DNN, but a good plan to prioritize our work is crucial to make sense of the business values and the effort we put out (in this case, it’s our time).
I am currently involved in updating the default.css file to avoid breaking changes for legacy DNN versions while eliminating the deprecated CSS markup. Our team consists of Timo Breumelhof, Salar Golestanian, and myself, have re-organized, optimized, and tested the new default.css file and hope it will be incorporated into the core framework so everybody can take advantage of a more semantic approach of writing CSS.
So, we need your help! If you wish to help speeding the process, go ahead and grab the file and test it in your environment. You can start using it and report issues you encounter. We will correct it and hope this would be one less thing you have to think about when designing and developing DotNetNuke skins in the near future.
Download the Default.css beta version.
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