It is over 20 yrs since I last did a serious coding project and the reality is that I do not want nor do I have the time to learn how to code in python and XML to achieve what I want to achieve in Kodi.
For these purposes I am more computer literate than most people, but a lot less so than developers of Kodi adds on and skins.
The reality for me was that trying lots of different Kodi skins and builds was an exercise in frustration. None of them quite matched what I wanted to do. But all of them were really interesting and gave me ideas of what I wanted.
In the end I settled on the Xonfluence skin but there were others that I really liked as well.
It is at this point that I ran across some limitations for the average user like me that impacts on our ability to create a Kodi interface just the way you want it. I do not want to get into the detail of coding. I love the way that the skin settings allow me to set up different add on sets or sub menu sets for different home buttons but where I run into problems is as follows:
I have 4 general purpose add ons myaddon1, myaddon2, my addon3, my addon4
Each of those addons has different sections for movies, TV Shows etc and, for example in the movies section they may have different categories for popular, latest, highest rated and similar.
So in my home menu item for movies I want my addon set to be myaddons1/movies, myaddon2/movies etc. And in the sub menu I might want the sub menus to solely point to the popular, latest and highest rated sub category in myaddon1/movies.
Using Kodi Favourites is a very simple way to create a short cut to myaddon1/movies or to myaddon1/movies/popular etc but doing that way results in a very long and unstructured list in Kodi Favourites. Super Favourites allows me to create a proper folder/subfolder structure to the Kodi Favourites
So far so good – a real easy to learn and use system that requires no coding by the end user.
But this is where it falls down. If you have a folder labelled Movies Addons which contains the shortcuts to myaddons1/movies, myaddon2/movies etc and then you want to use the skin settings to set up a custom add on set based on the contents contained in that folder you cannot do that (in the add on set selected favourites option you can choose the folder what you cannot do is select the folder and then have the option to open the folder and drill down)
This is a shame because allowing a folder to be opened in the “selected favourites” section of the skin settings for creating custom home items, addon sets and sub-menu sets would allow for a very quick and simple system for the average use AND create a simple prototyping system for the more gifted users who want to get their hands dirty hard coding the options when they have settled on a finished look and feel for a complete build
Of course I fully expect that there will be replies pointing out that I am doing it the wrong way and instead of saving everything as a favourite I should be using something else but please bear in mind I am claiming to have only the knowledge of an average non-techy user.