I've been searching for a proper replacement to ion3 for some time. I've settled with a combination of Openbox 3 with a keyboard-friendly theme and bindings, xbindkeys, and a hacked version of fspanel (the F**ing Small Panel). This page documents the various additional hacks I've made on top of that hacked version.

• I prefer the task list to be on the top of the screen; fsp-h is at the bottom
• Since I was so used to quick window switching via the keyboard under ion3 (i.e. jump to the nth window by pressing Win-n; e.g. jump to the fifth window by pressing Win-5), I added it in. Similarly, my concept of the "next window" is also influenced by ion3— the next window is the window listed next on the task bar, and not the window I previously selected (which Alt-Tab will switch to in most window managers)
• I also want a panel with a small visual footprint without necessarily having a small memory footprint

To that end, I've published the source code to my hacks. You can get the source from the attachments to this page, or via cloning it via git:

git clone git://github.com/jmibanez/fsp-h-jmi.git

Have fun!