I suggest making the containers 1,2,3....X to work the same as the rest of the skin logic. where the you would have [Container1][Container2][ContainerX]. To get more than 3 containers you could include an xml File that contained the names of the containers the code should expect (obviously some work on loading content placement would have to be reworked, but minor with Naming conventions). Another option is to approach it the same way the skin file is handled where you would have skin.htm and a containers.htm, I like the first approach better because it fits better into the current skin design but the second approach would allow you to have different containers.htm files for different tabs allowing you to modify the layout of the site per tab. inside the containers.htm without messing with a root skin. (combine the two concepts and you have a very flexable layout)

jet,

Hey what do i see now, no dhtml anymore. So do you have plans allready to include that in dn2, using skin and container it should be lot easier then to complete this.

I am still working on the mymsn clone myself alsmost done, damn there can be lot of small bugs when trying to create javascript dynamically but its coming.

I am also working on some new skin stuff. Working on setup to referecne a skinobject to a tabid, meaning you can give different settings per skinobject per tab. I just dont find enough settings that i can drop in the skin.xml. Kinda like your container idea. More posibillities and extendibillity

yeah, I never was a big fan of client side code but it has its purpose. The main thing was really frustrating was how inconsitant the dhtml worked when moving things and sizing around. After looking at the 2.0 code I realized there could be an easier way to that wasnt dependant on the client side. I still think the concept of client side online full GUI apps will be common place but there is a long way to go to get that to a into a "programming model" and out of a scripting model. Its closer with java and dhtml is moving along also, but in my opinion (2cents here) untill you can get the codebehind and client talking smoothly and consitantly, or at least communicate the state of the document (positions, colors, everything--the document object) back to codebehind. I wishing it was included in the viewstate of a postback, imagine if you could, in the codebehind, see everything on a page as the client sees it and change it. Its getting there also but not quite there yet. Anyway, I think thats where its headed so Im probably going to wait for that, (maybe)
How close are you to a solution? I'll send you what I ended up with later this week.

Hi

Well at the moment we have a mymsn clone that is working like mymsn, and the panels are loaded are usercontrols.

Just have ot do some debuggung and trying to auto expire so that you cant drag and drop if session is expired ( thats what screwing it up now )

so the whole asp.net dhtml integration is done based on db all setings arte loaded iamges etc most of the styles is in css.

As soon as that is done we willd rop it online and look on how to do this in dnn2