Bruce,
I use them a lot and custom queries are fantastic and instead of sharing examples (a lot of the html/css etc. I use in custom queries come from licensed admin templates which means I cannot share them) I can share some thoughts.
I often sit and look at sites like:
http://www.themeforest.net
http://www.wrapbootstrap.com
http://www.codepen.io
and find different html/css etc. layouts, snippets etc. of various things I want to use in some application and then I look into the options for implementing the layout or snippet in the app. I often purchase a complete admin template and then use most of the parts coming with the template in the Aware IM app which means I manually "convert" all/most widgets and other things into html/css that works in custom queries and at the same time I also create a custom Aware IM theme to match the style and design of the admin template which means the end result is almost seamless i.e. the Aware IM application basically looks exactly as the admin template. To give you an example, this is one of the templates I have worked with before: https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/material-admin-responsive-angularjs-WB011H985 and all of the different parts of this template like the menusystem to the left, topbar menu, widgets like the weather widget, the stats widgets etc. etc., all of these things are different parts I can use in different individual custom queries (1 for topbar, 1 for widget x, 1 for widget y etc. etc.). It doesn´t always make sense to do things in custom queries though, sometimes just having the html/css in a content panel (static html) is sufficient and this is especially true now in version 7 when we have autorefresh on content panels as well (we didn´t have that before and is one of the main reasons I previously also used custom queries for things like menu system etc.).
NB: Integrating admin templates can be expensive though as when working with commercial applications etc. we often need the extended license of admin templates which means it costs around 500-1200USD for a single application template.
I also sometimes do manual stuff like the following Aware IM template I have been working on: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4983074/Exec/index.html . I basically designed etc. this from scratch (using an extjs sample application as inspiration) and all of the different things you see here i.e. all views like timeline, widgets, menus etc. etc. are custom queries:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4983074/Exec/index.html
NB: Here you can read more about the executive dashboard template: https://forum.awareim.com/d/8059/41&hilit=executive+dashboard#p34537 . I have placed this project on the backburner for now as I ran into some licensing issues with Sencha (I basically did a clone of their Executive Dashboard application and I didn´t think it would matter to them (I asked them about it) but their legal department wasn´t pleased 🙁 ).
With custom queries you can do almost whatever you want and sure some things like converting stuff they way I do is a lot of work but custom queries gives you power to do whatever if you are willing to do the work (or if you are a html/css wiz).
