>>You should be able to accomplish the same thing with some jQuery UI magic, which can simulate a modal dialog. IMO, it's even better because it doesn't replace an existing panel. For example, I just clicked Search from the UT toolbar. The search dialog replaced the message list. How do I get back to the message list now? What if there are messages I want still want to read? Time Warp? Not very intuitive. But the "modal" dialog works well.
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>For the search issue, you may click on Search #2. This is why it was created. It will bring the search into the transactional frame. Thus, it will not overwrite your reading of new messages.
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>As far as jQuery or any other magic, I try to remain with .NET and javascript (based one). My experience shows me that when you go too far with components or things that we are dependant are, this is when it becomes too difficult to migrate later on. After having done two major frameworks over the years, I have realized the downsize effect of being to dependant on proprietary technology. This is one reason why I build pretty much everything on my own, such as the FTP class, the MHTML class, the outlook reading, Excel export, etc. A good example of that was the use of PHDBase in VFP. Have we been in trouble when Jim Korenthal was no longer able to continue its support? I had to wait for a while before switching the backend in order to assure that I would have benefited from native full text indexing instead of relying on a 3rd party component. Jim did a fantastic job however with that tool. IMHO, on all those I used in VFP, it was the best one.

The nice thing with jQuery is that it's open source, which means you don't depend on one guy or one company to develop it further; it's not going out of business tomorrow. And you don't have to use the whole at all - you can just see how they did this or that and use the tricks you like. And I'm saying that as someone who writes builders for breakfast, and code generators between meals. I am firmly in the roll-your-own camp, simply because most of the tools out there are designed around requirements different from mine, and are mostly too generic to address my needs. It's with jQuery that I have changed my mind, it just saved me tons of time. True, I didn't have any js framework to begin with, but seeing all the things it does, I wonder whether I'd ever have the time to build one.

Now that you do have one, I'd only recommend that you take a few tricks from it. Someone out there may have done what you're trying to do and has shared the results.