While what you say is true, it's been my experience that many times a functional product is more important than it's validation. Sometimes a product has to mature a bit (and even find out if it has a potential customer base). I'll once again use Ventrian's modules which I rate as one of the "Must-have" subscriptions for quality modules that get the job done (SimpleGallery, PropertyAgent, NewsArticles, etc), but they do not always pass the mustard for validation. This has not been a huge deal for my clients, as they only really care if the module "works" across the big 3.5 browsers (IE, FF, Opera, Safari). Now, "works" is a very general term. For what the customer wants, they can add, change and delete content all day long with no browser crashes or funky stylesheet explosions... other than that he/she doesn't much care.

Now that's not to say that I don't care, but I have to be prudent with my time and resources, so I participate in the forums (DNN, Ventrian, XMod, etc.) and will occaisonally spout the "please more valid front-end code" plea but I also understand that like me, the developers have only a limited amount of time and resources as well. Now compound that with the fact that DNN is a constantly evolving framework and what works today may not work tomorrow, and that makes the dev's job even more tedious and creates a decision of New Features v. reworking the core module code, and most of the time Features win since customers pay for features and updates.

The only other catch I can see is that there are 20 bazillion ways to design a skin from pure Table hate to CSS beauty and everything in between, which I have no doubt makes the issue of creating a highly functional, multi-featured module that passes validation a nightmare.

Now alot of this is based on assumption as I only deal with the design / coding / skinning of sites and not the actual programming of modules so I can't say I'm the end-all-be-all of DNN information but I can only imagine what the devs are having to work with considering where DNN came from and where it needs to go. Luckily we have a huge, talented and capable community and we just need to support our devs and give them as much constructive feedback as they can process.

ok, getting off my soapbox...

SB

Very true Jeff,

I tend to forget about the Gov't and large organizations since my focus is usually small to medium size businesses who are just looking for a functional, modular site that they can update on their own w/o Dreamweaver or gods forbid, Frontpage (shiver). I do believe in our developer's abilities I just think that many of them probably have their plates full but I would gladly offer what help I could (which would probably be "not much") to help this move forward as DNN is a great framework and community and I would like to see it capable of grabbing these Accessibility-aware clients. An economics quote I'm fond of repeating kind of falls into here "A rising tide lifts all boats."

SB

SilentBob wrote Maybe it's just me and the fact that my primary focus is skinning, but knocking out a custom skin is so easy with DNN I've never had to rely on the "free" alternatives. I can just as easily make up my own or just use one a client picks from TemplateMonster, BoxedArt, etc. and make it work with DNN. Just my $0.02 ~SB

Hi Bob,

  I have been using Template Monster to do some sites and really like the Flash Templates.

DNN has much more functionality obviously, but I would love to be able to work a Flash intro or template site into it.

In your eperience (you mention something about Template Monster), is this easy to do?  Specifically with Flash templates from T/M.

I know nothing about the technical side of this- I just get contractors to do it, but keen to hear your experience..

Cheers :)

Cohen