It's a little different than a 'panels' mod, but yes, you can make panels with Skinner. :cool:

Aye. It has the top frame, the bottom frame, and you can create "middle" frames with it, which are movable/resizable.

For a very lightweight tooltip you can use LonnyTooltip from this site :) Not sure if it's been mentioned as i skipped page 2 :/

Also, if you're good with lua you can use oUF with an own layout or use someone elses layout. To reach ultimate lightweightness ofcourse ;)

reccomend ouf_d3orbs, from rothui, has its own page now. diablo 3 health and mana orbs, for u, and nice target, party, pet, targettarget etc frames, in d3 style, (diablo 3)