[Wintermute0110]

How hard is it make skins use there views in AEL?
Anyone have an idea

It's not rocket science but it is tedious work for beginners (I guess you can say the same of any programming language, Kodi skin XML code is not strictly a programming language but shares many similarities with one). There are no good tutorials about Kodi skinning (in my opinion) so you will have to look into the code of other skins and then do trial and error. Also, it depends greatly on what you want to do: if you only want to change one view to display the boxfront instead of an icon you only need to change one word in an XML file. However, if you want to create a new view in the skin then you have to change several XML files, etc. Kodi skinning engine allows to declare variables, this means some skins code are "easy" to read but other skins are more complicated because they use a lot of definitions and macros.

I recommend you have a look to Estuary AEL. I made the code of my skin mod simple and with a lot of comments. Learn how to use Github so you can see the differences I did compared with the original code, then you will have an idea about what you need to do.

Last but not least, creating a skin from scratch is a titanic task, we are talking about hundredths of hours work. I strongly recommend you pick a skin you like. Then start modding to introduce a small change. Then create a completely new simple view, and so on. I also recommend to use a control version like Git, so you can always see the changes you do and revert them if necessary. Skinning is a lot about trial and error. Also, create a custom keyboard.xml and map the key F5 to reload the skin. This way, you can edit the code of the skin, press F5 and changes are loading instantly and you can test you changes.