Nobody ever said that skinning already works. Don't use it.

So how do I get to reset the clist to something that works? Install a older version?

Nope, unload the skin and then you'll most likely have to adjust some settings which were changed by it.

And how do I do that without installing an older version?

Well, since you managed somehow to load a skin, you should also be able to unload it, because the button to unload a skin is next to the button which loads a skin

Where can I get any info on when (if ever), the skinning engine will be working?

It is working fine in the current release. A lot of people are using it and there were already skin releases (like the dream pack). If it doesn't work on your system, its a system specific problem (maybe drivers etc.). The "pink" effect usually means that something destroyed the alpha channel of the cached bitmaps. This happens on some systems when overlays are in use or the 2d bitmap acceleration is enabled in the graphics driver properties (especially on nvidia cards this seems to be buggy). There is currently no fix for this issue in clist_nicer+. So basically, that sums up to: If it works - fine, if not, then sorry.

Is there some documentation of skinning Clist_Nicer window? Like with TabSRMM.

Basically, it's the same syntax

The only difference lies in the item names to use and some other parameters which are special to the contact list.

I plan to release a sample skin together with the next official clist_nicer 0.8 (on the file listing) which should be documented enough to understand how to change or modify it.