First installment of skinning A2 my way. It is the way I do it and I’ll show you some tools and tricks of the trade. Skinning Aston2 is still very hard at first but later is getting … well … not so hard.. I mean it is getting easier. First I’ll show you what tools I use and how to set them up for maximum productivity.

Notepad++ – Or some other text editor that supports syntax highlighting. You can use Windows built-in Notepad but Notepad++ has some great features and it is absolutely free.

Total Commander – download, install it and set it up like in video below. Watch it on youtube directly for better quality.

What features are important that makes TC (Total Commander) ideal for skinning?

I know some people tend to underestimate the knowledge of skinning and question its usability in other fields but I personally find the knowledge from my skinning background pretty applicable. I’ll show one example just to illustrate it.
CSS sprites, really cool way to achieve nice rollover effects, button states, look at the css code below from planetaston.com