FSGE (extention of Google Earth with all tne navigation data) and Plan-G as navigators.
I replaced the "terrain.cfg" by the one made by Richard Ludowise and Luis Féliz-Tirado ("fsx_modified_terrain_cfg.zip" Nov 2006).
"resautogentexfsx.zip" (31Oct2006) by Bart Dylkiewicz.
"fs_waterfix_v2",   "taxiway_enhancement_v1" et  "fps_enhancement_package_v2" by Tom Knudsen.
"fsxtrees" [GRTrees] by Adnan Arif.
So many meshes and sceneries by Toni Agramont,  USA 10m by Wayne Evans,  4x  European ground textures by Adam Mills.
Many enhancements made by Aymé Leclercg (Roads, railroads, rivers).
"stars_fsx" by F. Ronchi.
"NotsoBlue" (waters) by Luiz Alvarenga.

I also use most of the addons built by  Jacky Brouze.

I could finally install  Tileproxy  - Click to see some tips about that fantastic tool :     

Du moins une tentative personnelle d'éclaircir le sujet et que je vais essayer de tenir à jour, améliorer, élargir, ... d'autant plus facilement que l'on voudra bien m'y encourager.

Applicable à FSX et à FS2004 - je pense.           

1. How to to :
   Install a panel :    

   Install an xml gauge (or a group of xml gauges) contained in a cab files :    

   Make a cab files :    


2. When installing a new panel pay also attention to the titles in the aircraft.cfg file. Make the several titles really different.

3. To edit a *.xml or *.htm file use a "simple" word processing program like Notepad (NEVER Word, Wordpad, ... ).
    To edit a *.cfg file you can use Wordpad or equivalent wordprocessor.

4. To add a comment in a  *.cfg file just add at the end of each line  :  // your comment

5. To hide a gauge in the panel.cfg file : put an apostrophe  'gaugexx=............  either  gaugexx='..........

6. You may have to reset an AP after having changed of aircraft "in flight" (because of differences between the aircraft.cfg files).

7. To make an airplane fly horizontaly, just modify the aircraft.cfg as here and test several values of x (drawback ???) - NOT ALWAYS working :

[flight_tuning]
cruise_lift_scalar=1.x00 // or 0.xxx - default = 1.000

8. If you want to enjoy an operational set of radios (particularly if there is or not a stanby frequency), please check the settings in the aircraft.cfg file :

[Radios]
// Radio_Type.# = available (1=Yes, 0=No or no mention), standby frequency (1=Yes, 0=No), has glide slope (1=Yes, 0=No)

Audio.1 = 1
Com.1 = 1, 1
Com.2 = 1, 1
Nav.1 = 1, 1, 1
Nav.2 = 1, 1, 0
Adf.1 = 1
Transponder.1 = 1
Marker.1 = 1

9. If you use a backup gauge verify that it is declared in the aircraft.cfg file, for instance :

[airspeed_indicators]
airspeed_indicator.0=1
airspeed_indicator.1=1

10. About the VC and the visibility forward it is very often interesting to add/modify the following lines - with approaching numbers:

[VIEWS]    //  in the panel.cfg file.
VIEW_FORWARD_ZOOM=1.000
VIEW_FORWARD_DIR=4.500,   0.000,  0.000      // Pitch Up/Dn - Bank L/R - HDG L/R
VIEW_FORWARD_EYE=0.000, -0.050, -0.450     // Lateral L/R - Up/Dn - F/Back


[Views]    //  in the aircraft.cfg file.
eyepoint= -3.20, 0.00, 1.95      // Long, Lat, Vert - in feet

"VIEW_FORWARD_EYE" is NOT supported in FS-X !

Other SW - all freewares:

I used Paint Shop Pro 4.1 (1997!)  for the main drawings. Unhappily, too old for Win7 64 so I'm testing another solution (free) like "Photofiltre".

Paint.Net   with its important plug-ins, not too difficult to handle, but only one picture at once.
Colormania  as complement for playing with the colors
Notepad++   to write program in XML as well in HTML
Fillezilla   as FTP client
FS Viewer to view and sort all my pictures of panels and gauges.
and Faststone Capture (old freeware version).