richarduk To reduce the sea of divs that is the current default output and to reduce that sea of divs even when using a simplified callback, I suggest the following which will greatly help in styling:
There is no need to nest divs e.g. depth-1, depth-2 etc.are currently nested one within another. The nesting is redundant. Divs can be indented according to depth-1, depth-2 etc. e.g.
div.depth-1 {margin:0;}
div.depth-2 {margin:0 0 20px 0;}
div.depth-3 {margin:0 0 40px 0} etc.This makes styling hugely easier.
Although user information is output as classes e.g byuser comment-author-admin this isn't much use when you want to style a comment e.g. a comment by comment-author-admin can't be styled at depth-1 depth-2 depth-3 etc. when each depth is a different width and there are pretty background images.
Therefore it would be better to still include the classes depth-1 depth-2 etc. as normal but in addition have classes such as depth-1-admin depth-2-admin depth-3-admin etc. That would remove one div class from the custom callback.
Here is the HTML that my callback currently produces. I shall probably have to add in another div. to style authors, as mentioned above.
<div class="comment even thread-even depth-1" id="comment-23">
<div class="comment-body"><!--Contains background image for body of comment-->
<p class="comment-top"> </p><!--Contains top background image-->
<img alt='' src='http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/c6dbamp;d=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fa2&r=G' class='avatar avatar-32 photo' height='32' width='32' />
<cite class="fn">ninth comment<span class="says">says:</span></cite>
<p class="comment-meta"><a href="http://www.mysite.com/yrdy/comment-page-1/#comment-23">
February 24, 2010 at 6:36 pm</a>
<a class="comment-edit-link" href="http://www.mysite.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=editcomment&c=23" title="Edit comment">(Edit)</a></p>
<p>this is a load of text</p>
<p>this is a load of text</p>
<p class="reply"><a rel='nofollow' class='comment-reply-link' href='/yrdy/comment-page-1/?replytocom=23#respond' onclick='return addComment.moveForm("comment-23", "23", "respond", "110")'>Reply</a></p>
<p class="comment-bottom"> </p><!--Contains bottom background image-->
</div><!--Close comment-body-->
</div><!--Close comment-->
