The UI overhaul should end up with a flexible layout. Right now, you can fairly easily change the colors, but the overall layout still looks pretty much the same.
What we hope to achieve with the new UI would be a skinning mechanism where skins not only include colors and css settings but template changes as well. So, if you prefer the old 6.x look, it would be possible to create a skin with that look. It will also be possible to create PDA skins that people have been requesting as well.
As for the table-less question. That's what I'm hoping for, but at this point it's up in the air, there still may be some tables, but we definitely hope to cut down and control more with a CSS approach.
