That's all good, Freddy... I'm not unhappy at all... I'm just chatting. Web design is still an interesting topic. A trick to do with the table idea, is to make a fake background by having a 100% width on the table, and then a column span of three for the header, three columns, with the forum module in the middle, and a column span of three again for the footer.
Example:
[header colspan=3]
[side][FORUM][side] ( 3 columns)
[footer colspan=3]
Now you can cut up the background image into smaller images of just the parts that are visible, and probably reduce the overall file size by 90%... That's a reduction of about 225K in this case, and it should look identical to the 250K background image.
That chatroom you coded in JavaScript is superb! It is nice to chat with someone who understands the subject well.