7.1

Table Of Contents
Design
Before you start creating a skin you should have a visual theme which determines the look & feel of your web site. This can be
the design of your current corporate site, your customers web site or a new design. You'll probably start your design in an
application like Adobe Photoshop ending up with a bunch of sliced images (background images, icons, button backgrounds
etc). On the web you can find several samples and downloadable .psd files which will get you up and running in no time.
Text editor
There are several specialized CSS editors available. The PrintShop Mail Web style sheet documents are a combination of CSS
and PHP so we advise you to use a text editor like Notepad++. This is an open source editor (a Notepad replacement) that sup-
port coding in several programming languages. The application runs under the MS Windows and can be downloaded for free at
the following location: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/
The style.php file in Notepad++
Browser extensions
The toughest part will be to keep your skin compatible with the various browsers and browser versions. You can download
and install additional browser extensions that will help you during skin creation. Typically these extensions expose the hier-
archical structure of your web page allowing you to identify tag names, ids and CSS classes quickly. These extensions are
available for all popular web browsers and can be downloaded for free. Below you'll find a list of popular extensions:
l Firebug for Fire Fox (our personal favorite)
l Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
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