Regarding vertical spacing, you could wrap the thumbnails in a fixed height div to correct this. You need to edit template 'gallerylist.tpl', line 121, example as follows...

Code
<div style="height:135px;padding:10px 0;"><a href="{ubb url="ubb=showgallery&Number=`$postrow[topic].Number``$postrow[topic].goto`" title=$postrow[topic].SubjectClean}">{$postrow[topic].Subject}</a></div>

I use a similar method on my site...
Example here

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