A couple of weeks ago, I agreed to work on the Panels Mini module, which would become part of the second version of Earl Miles’ outstanding Panels module. While working on that, I suggested to let modules implement styles for panels. (I was inspired by Nedjo Rogers’ Panelsblock module, which sort of gives you “tabbed Mini Panels” for Panels 1). All you then would have to do, is: pick the Panel Style in the settings for the Mini Panel (or whatever other Panels implementation chooses to support it) and then change the CSS to get exactly what you want. This should prove to be a real timesaver.
More about Panel Styles I’ve written 2 Panel Styles so far:
Carousel Panel Style and Tabs Panel Style. The latter might be included in Panels 2. Both were sponsored by Paul Ektov.
To write a Panel Style, you only have to implement 2 hooks, or 4 hooks if you want to offer configuration options. Hopefully that will result in many contributed Panel Styles!