Can't do your suggestion, as the site being worked on is Live and it changes and updates on a daily basis and by now development db and the live db are out of sync by at least a few hundred items.
Also all development contains loads of modules and components we have tested but decided not to use.
So Development site was a capture of a the live site at a moment in time and now they both taken different courses so to say.
Shame be good if ijoomla news had a copy setting or export and import settings. So you could easliy copy all the font changes colour changes which i persume are in the db or the files related to ijoomla news.
Looks like there will be a lot of manual work
