Thanks for that. I was stumped by the docs:
A surface is an off- screen texture upon which you can draw other image, artwork, text, listbox and surface objects.
I understood that as an object which you don't see until you decide to show it. But I couldn't see any show/display/render method on the class.
Anyway, I'm getting a pretty good idea of how the system works now. Thanks to you clever folks.
I'll be putting a quick preview of my theme together soon and I'll be sure to post a link to the forum. I'm taking a slightly different approach from most themes in that mine is going to rely heavily on purchased stock material. Background videos and sounds etc. I can highly recommend envato.com as a good source of pretty cheap source material. The only issue is that I won't be able to share any of the digital assets of my theme as the license prohibits me from sharing. But I'll be happy to share the nuts ;-)
cheers,
-tomek