Bosco,
1) Yeah, Mikey cleared that up for me. If it wasn't so late when I read your post, I probably would've gotten it, but me being so literal-minded sometimes.... I tried resizing the read/unread icons, btw, but to no avail; it's the fact that the tree view has the post title on one line, aligned left, and the poster and datetime stamp on the next line, aligned right, that creates the excessive height. If that were changed, then the icon could be reduced in size to match the line-height (unless the line wraps), but we have much bigger issues to resolve before I get to that level of templating.
2) Interesting idea. What do others think? Dave?
3) Ahh, I honestly hadn't noticed that; good point. That really should be "Submit Topic" not "Create Topic". This should be easy to fix since it's html type, unlike all the iconic buttons (tree view, new topic, post reply, etc.), all of which would be a huge pain to re-create since I don't have the font nor the layer styles applied to the images. I'll look into fixing this as soon as I can.
4) I just wish I was there to see it! If I had been drinking beer at the time I read "My main point", I wouldv'e sprayed my monitor with the stuff, I'm sure. That was just too funny.