Let me explain why I’m pushing Enlightenment theme a lot:
That theme is based on a framework whose features were developed based on the feedback offered by our previous themes users’. It was created to solve problems like the ones you posted above without the need to hack into template files.
The long term plan is to have all themes ported to the new framework but until that is completed, the next best thing is to try out Enlightenment theme. It’s not like I can explain in a forum reply how a feature that took weeks or months to develop was implemented.