If anyone is interested in seeing it all in action, or wants to get some ideas about what I came up with, check out

http://65.5.154.16/phpMyAdmin/

Wouch! You don't like original colors and display, do you ? :) If it were not written, it would be hard to say it's really phpMyAdmin!

Anyway, templates like in phpGroupWare would be the best way to provide easy customization, but the current design is not suitable for that. We should choose between some customization with some cfg variables and a better design allowing themes.