But why???  I know that's the way it's always been, but why can't the second control use the same skin as the first control?

If the module's page has the permission for "All User" to be able to view it I don't think it should be displayed with the Admin Skin.  If it has the "Edit" permission, then I can see that it should be using the Admin Skin.  Just my opinion...

About a year ago I was looking into this subject, but dropped it..... If I remember correctly, I had determined that during the loading of the second control, it was actually an error that caused the skin to default to the admin skin.  I'll have to look back into it.

Are there any work arounds to this?  Is there any way to "force" a skin for a module?  The only way I have been able to accomplish my goal here is to set the Admin Skin/container to the same as the Portal Skin.  Another way to accomplish this is to have two modules;  Module "A" has the "List" control.  Module "B" has the "Edit" control.

Any other suggestions?

well i never liked this either, ou can either do a core change ( i think it was commneting out or changing a few lines of code )

or you can make a dispatch module, so that you have the main module as a holder for the rest of the controls. ( so in this control you either load normal view, detail view, super detail view  etc

Here's what I've come up with after reviewing some other posts about passing skinsrc, skinname, containersrc, and containername as querystring parameters to force a skin/container.

What I've done is create a function that I pass in the standard EditUrl & the PortalSettings.ActiveTab.

The from the PortalSettings.ActiveTab I can get the SkinSrc, SkinPath, ContainerSrc and ContainerPath of the current tab I'm on.

Reusable function that builds the url string:

        Friend Function syBuildEditURL(ByVal sURL As String, ByVal objTabInfo As DotNetNuke.Entities.Tabs.TabInfo) As String
            Dim sResult As String = sURL

            Dim sSkinName As String = objTabInfo.SkinPath
            Dim sSkinSrc As String = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(objTabInfo.SkinSrc)

            Dim sContainerName As String = objTabInfo.ContainerPath
            Dim sContainerSrc As String = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(objTabInfo.ContainerSrc)

            sSkinName = Left(sSkinName, sSkinName.Trim.Length - 1) ' trim off last "/"
            sSkinName = sSkinName.Substring(sSkinName.LastIndexOf("/") + 1)

            If InStr(objTabInfo.SkinPath, "_default") > 0 Then
                sSkinSrc = "[G]Skins/" & sSkinName & "/" & sSkinSrc
            Else
                sSkinSrc = "[L]Skins/" & sSkinName & "/" & sSkinSrc
            End If

            sContainerName = Left(sContainerName, sContainerName.Trim.Length - 1) ' trim off last "/"
            sContainerName = sContainerName.Substring(sContainerName.LastIndexOf("/") + 1)

            If InStr(objTabInfo.ContainerPath, "_default") > 0 Then
                sContainerSrc = "[G]Containers/" & sContainerName & "/" & sContainerSrc
            Else
                sContainerSrc = "[L]Containers/" & sContainerName & "/" & sContainerSrc
            End If

            sResult = String.Format("{0}&skinname={1}&skinsrc={2}&containername={3}&containersrc={4}", _
                        sURL, System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(sSkinName), System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(sSkinSrc), System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(sContainerName), System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(sContainerSrc))

            Return sResult
        End Function

       
When I need to call the second control, I can do something like the following:       

                Try
                    Dim sURL As String = syBuildEditURL(EditUrl("ItemID", Null.NullInteger.ToString), Me.PortalSettings.ActiveTab)
                    Response.Redirect(sURL, True)
                Catch exc As Exception
                    ProcessModuleLoadException(Me, exc)
                End Try
               

Hope this will be useful to others.....