Yeah, there is definetly a trade-off when you go with the no tables route, it makes it alot more difficult to get things to display the way you want them too. Vanilla is definetly a good start, and a great light weight discussion forum. But when you get to such a feature rich forum like threads I think you almost NEED tables just to keep everything well organized. Still if someone could pull it off it'd be a nice refreshing view to see.