I've thought about something similar re: hiding unnecessary unitframes when nameplate doubles exist. the playerframe seems totally pointless in combat now we have the player nameplate.
i'm halfway through working on an idea that detaches the nameplates & condenses them into a grid. a quick n dirty sketch:
http://i.cubeupload.com/I188Bp.png
I've also found the plates relatively easy to style without a rewrite, though i haven't delved much into performance differences just yet:
https://github.com/obble/UIForModern...ates/plate.lua