hi first thanks so much to everyone. i am a beginner with CSS and reading this list and all the other valuable resources. i now have a page in which i have replaced the tables with CSS. and it works in Mozilla 1.5 on WinXP. i would appreciate anyone looking at the stylesheet to see why it won't work in IE 6, and Opera 7.2 (i have only tested these 3). the peculiar pixel #'s are result of duplicating precisely the client's layout. this is a really really simple site, though i have gotten to this stage in 2 weeks. i gave the div's BG colors to see what is happening and my first clue is that the colors dont show at all in IE6, and those are positioned. i thought that by using margins instead of padding i could avoid having to use the hack. but it seems IE6 wont recognize the top margin on the header at all. in opera, the middle column slips under the right column unless the window is maxed. th e page is www.brainsfarm.com i am embarrassed to have only gotten this far with so much work, and if i have presented a project that is too rudimentary for this group i hope you will tell me. thanks sam ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL-REMOVED]] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/