Apologize for the bumpage, but I had a few hours and made up a front page, since IMHO the existing one is kinda fugly (I hate times new roman and regular frames).
I made up two basic themes, a light one and a dark one (just an inverse of the light one).
Light VersionDark VersionThe news bit is an iframe, so integrating it with the IPB output shouldn't be too hard. All thats in the news file is a list of tables, following almost the exact same format as the current news page (a few CSS classes are the only difference). Another reason its an iframe is because otherwise it can screw up the alignment of the graphics slightly, the little grid doesn't always line up. I didn't feel like finding a real solution, or losing the fade effect, so I cheated.
Oh, and its still a WIP, since I was just bored and needed something to do (aside from the piles of summer reading that I have yet to touch).
NOTE: The link may be down a LOT, since my DSL connection is down about 40% of the time (I'm switching ISPs as soon as humanly possible) and the site is hosted on my own server