Swguy's tip can be used as is for v1.3.9whatever, without worrying about the bugfix part.

Esales' discussion does not say that other templates are easier to style than Classic, and generally customizing properly written tempates (like most of the ones in Free Addons) is much the same.If you like the basic setup of Classic, just copy all /classic/ files/folders and work from there. Otherwise, install one you like as a starting point.