Theme development

I've been having difficulty using xtemplate to achieve the layout I'd like.

I'm fairly well versed in CSS layout, but my PHP is lacking slightly.

I edited the css and the images for the xtemplate-pushbutton theme, renamed it as a new theme, and I would like to have it available in addition to the original pushbutton theme. How can I do this? I tried uploading the file to my site, but that created an error:

Hi, I edited the xtemplate/pushbutton theme last night and now when you post a comment or preview a comment I get this error. Any ideas what could be wrong? I'm only asking because one I have no idea what could be wrong and two I was working in a few different files.

user notice: [XTemplate] parse: blockname [comment.new] does not exist in /home/duztin/public_html/themes/xtemplate/xtemplate.inc on line 418.

I'm sitting here trying to convert a design at a old page to a Drupal theme. I took adc theme and started to convert, but I just don't get it right. I don't know that things to remove that I'm not going to use.

Page that I'm converting from:
Page converting to:

The old page uses tables and that is the thing I only been woking with. A page with only div tags is like a small hell for me. The thing I need is a reference design locking like the old page that I'm converting from. The aesthetic things can I fix for my self.

I'm a total CSS newb and I'm wondering if anyone has a good source for a "cheat sheet" style chart for CSS syntax? Something that shows all available options per command.

i.e. for the text-decoration:

h1 {text-decoration: overline}
h2 {text-decoration: line-through}
h3 {text-decoration: underline}

Thanks in advance.

I was wondering if anyone might be able to clear up the differences between a template, a theme, and a skin.

I'm also wondering how css fits into these and what needs to be edited and when.

Any experiences and examples are certainly welcome.

Thanks very much.