You need to be familiar with C# and MediaCenter development and, especially MCML (or be willing to get familiar with them) and you should take some time going through the MediaBrowser code and other plug-ins to get familiar with how they work. MCML takes a little getting used to so you need to spend some time with it before charging off into theme development.
To do that, you need to have all the proper things installed like:
- Microsoft Visual Studio (Express C# will work but you can’t debug so I recommend the real copy)
- Microsoft Windows SDK
- Microsoft Media Center SDK
- Mercurial source control (tortoisehg is probably the easiest)
Once you have that all setup, bring down the source to MediaBrowser and familiarize yourself with how it and the current plug-ins themes work. Right now, there is a small example theme in the source that implements the old “Classic” theme. It can give you some ideas.
When you feel ready to start your theme you need to get the Visual Studio Project Template for MediaBrowser Themes and install it. Right now, that can be obtained from the root directory of the source code you brought down. (hopefully, we can add it to the downloads section as well). It is called “MediaBrowser Theme.vsi”. Just double-click it, accept the fact that its not signed and allow it to install.
Now, when you go to create a new project, under MediaCenter you will see the option to create a “MediaBrowser Theme”. Select that, give your plug-in theme a name and get going.
Comments in the code that is generated from the template should give you a head start.