[kh99]

You can use variables, you just put a php variable directly in the template. You can use any variable that's available when the template is eval()'d. So you could do something like:

<ul id="slider">
  <li>
  <a class="featured-item_$item" href="showthread.php?t=$tid" title="$title">
  <span class="slide-caption">$title</span></a>
  </li>    
</ul>

Then of course you'd need to set those variavle in php code somewhere, like a plugin or a custom script.