I think that there would be a very simple method to make the look optional. Add to the w3ttheme file variables for two tables, opening and closing. For example, on the green board, I used the following HTML, two nested tables, in place of the original tables in all the perl files:
[:blue]TABLE_ONE_OPEN = 'table cellspacing="0" border="0" cellpadding="0" width="$theme{'tablewidth'}" align="$theme{'tablealign'}"
tr td bgcolor="$theme{'bordercolor'}"
TABLE_TWO_OPEN = ' table cellspacing="1" border="0" cellpadding="5" align="center" width="100%"
tr td bgcolor="$theme{'tddark'}"
TABLE_ONE_CLOSE = '/td /tr /table'
TABLE_TWO_CLOSE = '/td /tr /table'
[:green](sorry the html tags don't have the closing and opening brackets, couldn't figure out how to put html just for display in the message)
Then you replace all of the tables in the code with the variables and you can modify the style how you wish. Either leave it alone or tweak it away.
I just wanted to mention that I have nothing against the original layout of W3T. It is different, and that is good! However, our jobs as site designers and webmasters is to make the User experience as pleasant as possible. Depending on the market you are targeting with your site, changes may not be necessary, but as powerful and cool W3T is, I think that their should be the abiltiy to customize the look 'n' feel relatively easily. I also dont think that looking like UBB is a bad thing, it is the most popular discussion software out there, despite its ineffiecency for large discussion boards. If something is familiar to someone they are more likely to use it, than if not, because they will have to adjust/change, and we all know people just dont like to do that []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]. Just my opinion. Thanks to Scream for a great product!!!
Mike
