Thought some of you may be interested to see what we did. Almost all modifications were made to integratedModes.xsl (we're not using the multiple locale functionality). In a nutshell, we've gotten rid of the concept of "preferences mode" - it's not something you turn on or off - you're always in preferences mode. Some of the preferences functionality was lost (e.g. you can't move a channel or column to another tab, you can only move it around the active tab) but it's pretty neat and we've gotten really positive feedback from our users.

We've eliminated the animated targets for moving/adding new layout components (and therefore eliminated the number of clicks to perform an action). There are "option menus" (implemented in javascript) on a tab, column and channel which provide the links to the various user preferences and channel options.

Some screenshots of our portal demonstrate the look of our XHTML/CSS layout. We're not currently using Aggregated Layouts or Integrated Modes. The screenshots also demonstrate the look and feel of some of our CSS "widgets" like the toolbars in the mail channel.