I just watched the video showing the backend of TF and wanted to confirm it can do something specific. I'd like to create a website similar to http://fthrwght.com/autofocus/prodemo in that the homepage links will be images that are in multiple rows and columns. The main difference (compared to a regular blog) is there would be no posts or sidebars on the homepage. Is it possible to create this configuration in TF? Thanks in advance for your reply.

You could probably do something like that with widget areas or you could just use a static page as your home page and place the images there.

Without doing custom css, can I make a page with several boxes (widgets?) that act as links to internal pages, each box having a different background photo (I saw this option in the TF intro video)? This design would only be for the home page - the idea is the same as a iPhone home screen.

I really appreciate your replies.

For what you are looking to do it seems like you could just use a table and put a hyperlinked image in each cell. Or you could get use floats if you feel comfortable with that or you could use a plugin to create columns. Or you could probably just put images side by side and if they are the right width they will wrap where you want.

Bottom line is there are a bunch of ways to accomplish what you want.