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answered on 03 Apr 2009, 03:11 PM

Ah... that explains it.

I do still have one question, though. I'm not really excited about how custom skinning works. I understand how to do it but the piece that's bothering me is the way you have to manually reference the CSS files whenever you use a custom skin. I wish there was a way to have the RadControls to be told where skins are located (maybe in the config file) such that if you reference a custom skin the approrpiate files get automatically included on the page.

I'm wondering, though, if I can achieve the same result by hooking into the SkinChanged event of the RadSkinManager. When that event is fired I could see if it's one of my custom skins and if so THEN register the appropriate CSS files. I'm guessing I could determine the control type based on the sender arguement of the event.

Of course then I would need to always use the RadSkinManager to handle skinning but I think that would work out okay in my scenario.

Is this how you would recommend automating the process of registering custom skins?

Thanks,
Kevin

answered on 06 Apr 2009, 03:48 PM

Hi Kevin,

The old ("classic") RadControls for ASP.NET supported the functionality "tell me where my custom skin is, so I can register the CSS file myself", but this created other problems, so we decided to remove this feature.

You can register CSS files automatically with ASP.NET themes, or register them at runtime.

There is also an option to create custom embedded skins - in this case you will still have to take care of the skin registration, but you will not have to bother about CSS file physical location. In addition, all CSS files will be served as one.

http://www.telerik.com/community/code-library/aspnet-ajax/general/including-custom-stylesheets-as-webresources-to-radstylesheetmanager.aspx

The SkinChanged event is fired by the RadSkinManager, so the sender is always the same.

Best wishes,
Dimo
the Telerik team

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answered on 08 Apr 2009, 03:45 PM

Hello Kevin,

There is no official recommendation about how to use custom skins - it depends on your scenario and preferences.

Most people use them in ASP.NET themes, because the CSS files are registered automatically, but this is not necessarily the best way, because it may turn out that some CSS files are registered, but not used.

There is no API for the RadSkinManager, which tells you whether a given skin is embedded or not - why would you need that ?

Kind regards,
Dimo
the Telerik team

Check out Telerik Trainer , the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.

answered on 08 Apr 2009, 08:00 PM

You need that API to make things generic for an application instead of hard coding "if we're using this skin then change

EnableEmbeddedSkins

to false".

I propose some new features to ease the use of custom skins:

1. Create an API that tells us whether a skin name is embedded

If we allow our users to change skins and one (or more) of our skins is NOT an embedded skin we need to set the EnableEmbeddedSkins property to FALSE. It would be nice if the RadControls (or RadSkinManager) would tell us whether the value we are using is an embedded skin so we know whether to flip the switch on the other propertly.

2. Create a way to register custom skins with RadControls (maybe in web.config)

This isn't just a "skinpath" type thing but rather a way for us to register all our skins with the the RadControls so things can happen automatically based on what skin is set on a control. This could include the skin name, potentially the controls supported by this skin, some information about how to get the resources (embedded our in a folder), etc. Then when a skin is assigned to a control everything is done automatically.

The embedded skins are awesome. We set the value and POOF everything just works. The same should be possible with custom skins.

I do a lot of work with dynamic pages, etc., so having to do things manually means my code can get messy. RadControls should be able to do this work for us.

Thanks,
Kevin