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Today we move our focus to DotNetNuke containers. Not because we are done with skins, but because we can’t go any further in our discussion of skinning until we cover containers.

As with skins, we need to be able to specify where the module should be located that the container will hold. We do this with a tag that will look very similar to a tag we used in the skin:

<div id="ContentPane" runat="server">
</div>

Note: the DIV tag could very easily be any tag that surrounds content, like the TD tag, just like we were able to do in the skin.

If you’ve been around DotNetNuke for any length of time, you already know that containers also have the ability to display a drop-down menu for administrators, Links for RSS feeds and printing, expand and collapse functionality, as well as many other lesser-known features. This functionality is added to a container using Container Objects. Container Objects work similarly to Skin objects in that they are bits of ASP.NET user control fragments that get added into our ASCX file to tell it to add a specific functionality.

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn"
    TagName="ActionButton"
    Src="~/Admin/Containers/ActionButton.ascx" %>

<dnn:ActionButton
runat="server"
id="dnnActionButton">

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn"
    TagName="DropDownActions"
    Src="~/A...rs/DropDownActions.ascx" %>

<dnn:DropDownActions
runat="server"
id="dnnDropDownActions" />

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn"
    TagName="Icon"
    Src="~/Admin/Containers/Icon.ascx" %>

<dnn:Icon runat="server"
id="dnnIcon" />

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn"
    TagName="LinkActions"
    Src="~/Admin/Containers/LinkActions.ascx" %>

<dnn:LinkActions
runat="server"
id="dnnLinkActions" />

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn"
    TagName="SolPartActions"
    Src="~/A...ers/SolPartActions.ascx" %>

<dnn:SolPartActions
runat="server"
id="dnnSolPartActions" />

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn"
    TagName="Title"
    Src="~/Admin/Containers/Title.ascx" %>

<dnn:Title runat="server"
id="dnnTitle" />

<%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn"
    TagName="Visibility"
    Src="~/Admin/Containers/Visibility.ascx" %>

<dnn:Visibility
runat="server"
id="dnnVisibility">

Most of these tags have additional attributes that control how the control will look when it is displayed. You can find more information in the DotNetNuke Skinning PDF that is part of the documentation ZIP file that you can download from the DotNetNuke site.

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Related Post

• DotNetNuke Skins - ASCX vs HTML mode
• DotNetNuke Skinning - Getting Set Up
• DotNetNuke - Skinning

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