I'd like to be able to edit skins in real time working directly with customers and their design/marketing teams.  We also sell print and online advertisements, so a website project is intimately related with advertising/marketing campaigns. Usually, we create print and online presentations with the same material at the same time, so being able to edit the skin in real time would be an important assistance. DNN projects might have several skins reflecting various advertising campaigns, so DNN projects can be many for one customer.  Dealing with many design variables using a laptop and tablet at the point-of-sale would save important time avoiding multiple meetings.

Once the design is set, any technical wrinkles will be ironed-out. Then, the designs will be saved to the skin package, then applied to the actual customer site at their domain.

I've set-up a special development DNN instance with a dedicated domain.  I'm not worried about anything "breaking" when working with a customer - this special domain is a "drawing board" where we can explore ideas. We're equipped with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Visual Studio, plus all customer files are available in the field accessing our central servers.  Basically, we can do anything with a laptop and tablet that can be done at a desktop workstation.

My questions are:

• Can the portals in this special DNN instance be edited directly with Visual Studio (or Dreamweaver) with the saved results available in real time?
• Once the changes are in place, and any technical considerations managed, can this skin package be applied to other DNN portals/instances?
• Are the skin files in the portal simply zipped to a location, then installed to the live site?

I imagine the answers to these question is "yes," but before investing serious time investigating this possibility I thought to ask the experience of the DNN community about possible problems or considerations.  Thanks!