My client requested chat that looks a certain way and he would not accept anything else. Without an existing chat foundation on the site, I had to get one and customize it. I chose phpfreechat and as it looks nothing like required I had to dig deep into CSS and fully reconstruct it. Unfortunately some of the customizations required were not as simple as editing the template file. After 3 days of struggle and finally a desperate call for help on twitter I finally was able to do the job.