Booting Brawl from the System Menu (tools -> load Wii system menu 513E) does not load custom textures. I noticed this while playing around with the Homebrew channel. On the Dolphin wiki it is stated that the emulator can replace the Homebrew Channel - not entirely true. There are a lot of applets that require Homebrew channel, like one that skins the system UI, SuperTux, Project M, etc. Also, why has the texture format been changed since 3.5? 3.5 won't load any of my newer textures.
other things I noticed
Gecko 1.9 crashes Brawl when trying to load unoffical WiiRD codes (for Krystal to replace Peach), regardless of patch methods
Homebrew Browser freezes (from dumped NAND and IOS converted to WAD), no matter what
Trying to launch any channels just returns to the Wii menu (latest release, was released little less than 12 hours ago)
When Dolphin freezes and I have to use Task Manager to close it it reverts to OpenGL (which is broken to start with, games freeze within 5 seconds)
Using DSound with Dolby decoder produces no sound
Still that annoying black box with Mario Kart regardless of suggested fixes, slow af anyway
other things I noticed
Gecko 1.9 crashes Brawl when trying to load unoffical WiiRD codes (for Krystal to replace Peach), regardless of patch methods
Homebrew Browser freezes (from dumped NAND and IOS converted to WAD), no matter what
Trying to launch any channels just returns to the Wii menu (latest release, was released little less than 12 hours ago)
When Dolphin freezes and I have to use Task Manager to close it it reverts to OpenGL (which is broken to start with, games freeze within 5 seconds)
Using DSound with Dolby decoder produces no sound
Still that annoying black box with Mario Kart regardless of suggested fixes, slow af anyway