Theme development

I am using phptemplate and I can't seem to access $node->teaser and $node->body separately with any reliability -- only $content, which seems to represent either the teaser or the body depending on some other criteria of which I have seem to have no control.

I am trying to make /taxonomy/term/1 list just the title and teaser of each node, but I want /taxonomy/term/2 to show the title and full body of each node.

Whatever I do I can't seem to get the invoice to theme using PHPTemplate and latest stable codebase; I just get a blank screen if I try (completely empty document returned). I know PHPTemplate is working fine because my other overrides, specified in template.tpl.php, are wokring fine. Is there another way of theming an invoice?

Anybody help please?

Is there an easy way to detect if the currently processed node in node.tpl.php is the first or last node of the page's main content?

any ideas on the cause of the errors after upgrading to 4.5.2? I am trying to figure out haow to fix this. . .

user notice: [XTemplate] parse: blockname [header.logo] does not exist in /home2/ma/public_html/themes/engines/xtemplate/xtemplate.inc on line 418.

user notice: [XTemplate] parse: blockname [header.site_name] does not exist in /home2/ma/public_html/themes/engines/xtemplate/xtemplate.inc on line 418.

user notice: [XTemplate] parse: blockname [header.title.tabs] does not exist in /home2/ma/public_html/themes/engines/xtemplate/xtemplate.inc on line 418

This may very well turn out to be a damn complex endeavor (maybe too complex for a noob such as myself) but I was wondering if I could get some layout help for the Kubrick theme. What I'm wanting to do is better explained with this image, a rough idea. I'd like everything published to the front page to be inconified, and have the full text hidden away, for a more sleek interface.

when creating content for personal blog entry the browser page width increases, it doesnt happen with other nodes.

any comments...