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It does solve the problem (as I understand it - to have a permanent login in theme) if it works, and it does :)
As for the style I agree, but didn't have the time to do it in diferent way. I think it could be done as smarty plugin as the "loading time/number of queries" hack, but I'm new to smarty and will have to read some docs before doing it.
Stefan
BTW: the PHP code is needed to display the number of mesages in Inbox, not for the login itself, so this part could be removed ...