I really do apologize if this has been asked before.  I did a few searches through the forums and never really found a good answer.

I'm somewhat new to DNN development, but not to development in general.  I recently switched from VS2005 to VS2008.  I have a couple of clients that have asked me to enhance their DNN based sites, starting with skin development.  I've created a few of my own skins and get the general idea of working with the DNN tokens or User Controls.  But...

Via a Visual Studio start kit for DNN skins, I've tried starting a few new projects.  It seems to me that when the environment generates the folders and default files, the organization of the skin directory under the development installation gets all messed up.  Also, for just creating a skin, it seems like having the entire DNN source library open is a bit overkill. 

Can anyone describe to me a (relatively) simple Visual Studio environment setup for skin development?  Even better would be a setup that includes support for module development.  The requirements would be to include only those projects or libraries required to make full use of the Visual Studio environment (ie Intellisense) and being able to build/debug the project as you work.  (My previous skin attempts were debugged via a tedious "change, save, ftp upload, choose new skin" process that was really time consuming for little changes).

Any help or redirection to available resources would be appreciated.

I use VS2005 as well and I am in the process of moving to vista/2008, but that is another discussion.

Here is wat I do. 
I have a simple DNN install on my local machine. I use virtual directories so: http://localhost/dnn481/. When I need to develop a new skin, I usually make a new child portal in this install so: http://localhost/dnn481/newclient, then in DNN I upload a skin from which I start developping the new custom skin. NextI start VS and open the website. Next I browse to the skin/container ascx file (and the skin/container.css of course) in the solution explorer and start skinning. After saving a file (ascx) , I simply refresh my browser. One immediately sees the changes and one never needs to do building or whatever in VS2005. Quite a simple proces actually.

When the skin is done, I package it, and move it over to some staging environment.

Peter

I personally have never needed to use an IDE like VS to skin, I just get the general code together in HTML with tokens, upload it then just edit the CSS on the site using the Webdeveloper extension for FF and several other tools. Now, as far as module development, I'm sure VS is the way to go, however I'm only a rookie when it comes to OOP so most my work stays in the realm of HTML / CSS / XML.

~SB