lost in VB4 templates. is there any help out there?

[Mutt]

I admit it. I have no clue what's going on in the VB4 templates. ever the simplest edits are driving me nuts. I handled the changes from vb2.3 to vb 3.5 w/ ease. within a weekend I was writing scripts & plugins. the new template vars & syntax were easy enough to follow. but the jump from 3.8 to 4.0, it's like I never looked at html before.

Please tell me there's an article or something which I just haven't found that explains how the hell these new templates work & where I should be going to make edits.

for example, there's no <td> tags. they are all div's or something else w/ a class tag which magically transforms everything. I'm trying to make what I expected to simple little changes to forumhome_forumbit_level2_post and it's like I've never edited a template before. I can see that

<div class="foruminfo td">

is what makes a table row w/ 3 or so columns for the status icon, the forum name & description, & the thread stats. i can see that each div inside it is another <td> of the row but deleting the td doesn't delete the column. it just leave an empty space there. adding a div doesn't make another column. I tried making a table go the full width of the row but it's like i'm trapped inside a table <td> i don't see.

i'm just so aggravated. I get this is all stylesheet stuff that I need to learn but could someone please point me in the right direction. over the years i've taught myself how to script thru looking at examples & trial & error but w/ this i don't even know where to look for the settings. i've dug all thru the style var editor & the template editor. I swear i'm not as dense as I'm coming off. I was doing really well w/ 3.8.

please, can someone tell me where to look for help or point me to an article. something. once i get thru a couple decent edits I know I'll be fine.

thanks in advance. I'm excited to start playing w/ 4 but if I can't make a template set that looks like my site, i'm stuck before I even get started.