omg is that what you're going on about? Here I'll rephrase it for you...
You didn't say improve the functionality of the interface, you said
"improve the visual interface". That means, make it more pretty.
and I personally love the idea of a $replace that can replace a part of the string with an image. If echoed, the image is used, if sent to the server the text is used.
Yes I think that is a good idea too.