Scream, could you please try to avoid double and triple posting? There's a button near at the bottom of your post called "Edit" where you can add things to your post.
And don't give up, I think what you were trying to do was skin Plus! itself with that last bit of code. It looked like it would have went into an options panel or something. Another thing, you tried opening it with IE and allowing tracefile?
to allow tracefile you put:
code:
<SkinInfo>
<Information>
<Tracefile>true</Tracefile>
</Information>
</SkinInfo>
The browser will show you any errors in your code and the tracefile will show you if you can't find a file or any other errors the browser wouldn't catch.