Theme development

On a theme i am developing there is a row whose hieght needs to be different on each page. Is there to allow a user to set a variables value while creating a new page that can be passed to page.tpl.php?

I was trying something like this. Quite unsuccessfully of course.

I put this at the top of page.tpl.php
$colheight = 500;

After that last line the content was printed out
print $content;

And this was near the bottom of page.tpl.php

How does Garland create that top menu? Where in the theme folder is that written? I would like to know so that I can create my own custom menu.

I'm using the privatemsg module and would like to change the layout. How can I change/override the current layout of the module?

I would like to modify the theme to convert the blue bar at the top center (above the name) to become an area. My goal is to put the login form and basic links on that bar.

The second mofification is the first page story module. I would like to include tags on the story preview. Currently the only things shown are Comments and Read More.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

I have updated my site to 5.0 and I am absolutely thrilled to bits with the new themes. However, it does look a bit bare... is it possible to use this theme, but with your own banner instead of the solid color bar at the top? Does that involve a lot of modifying or can it be done easily?

Hope this question hasn't been asked yet, I searched but could not find anything.

Thanks!

This was brought up at the issues section but was never answered, I wonder anyone has any solution for this?

http://drupal.org/node/85931