Heya...
Hard for me to recommend new colors like you mentioned above.. Every webmaster is different. However, might want to adjust the left frame's height you're using. At 1024*768 with browser maximized, there still isn't enough room to see the entire vote/poll section when using a 2-line taskbar.
Otherwise, nice job so far. Not sure how much I like the purple highlight bars though with the gray scheme?
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