We are developing an ASP.NET web application where some of the features that we will need to implement are quite standard: for example, a chat between users, a forum, etc.

There are ASP.NET chats and forums components available.

However, they all have a predetermined GUI and html markup that is almost impossible to change and very difficult to customize. And this is a very common situation for most controls like grids, etc.: you have very low control over the html markup that is being generated by the control.

In our case, our web app will have its own web design created by a professional web designer in PhotoShop, and then it will but transformed into html markup that will then be transformed in aspx pages.

We would ideally like to create the html markup for the forum and chat by ourselves, and use only the non-GUI part of the ASP.NET components.

Is this approach feasible? Has anyone dealt with such approach in practice?