Grid style category/archive/tag

Hi all,

I would like to have:
1) post archives displayed in a 3x3 grid, with each grid containing Title, Post Date, First Img in post, and Excerpt.

2) When the number of posts exceed 9, a row of page navigation links should appear for users to navigate between different sets of 3x3 grids.

3) Also, regardless of whether we are viewing posts in "Date" view (I believe this is called Archive?) in "Category" view, or sorted by "Tag", or any other field, the posts will be layed out in a 3x3 grid instead of a list.

To implement all the 3 things above, I think I need to modify some PHP files, but I am not very sure where to start, or what to do. I found a previous post about implementing an archive.php - indeed, that works, but there is quite a bit of missing functionality: For example, the bylines are not inserted (How do I do that in code?), and also, functions #2 and #3 above are not implemented.

Does anyone know what files/functions I should look into to implement the above?

Thanks!