Thank you, I knew someone would help.
Yes I modded tpl_main_page considerably. Also wrote a new style sheet since my template is really quite different. I did keep some of the basic text, alert and other "not up front" styles of the default css to save time. All the common templates are totally different now as well, needless to say. I continually test in FireFox, IE6, IE7, and IE 8 beta as I go to prevent and major time wastes after the fact. I still however, may have to break off a couple sections of the stylesheet and use browser a detection script for the big differences. So far it is ok but, not uhh "perfect' without doing that.
I took a minimalists approach and built up from there. I wanted the style sheet and main site templates to end up with way fewer lines code and way less divisions than the original default without touching the core. That took me two weeks alone. I also wanted it to be themeable with diff graphics packs of my flavor. So I just make a new set of graphics, upload them and bam, a whole new cart theme without modding my style sheet. I am working on a crude text/link color selector in admin side now for when the theme colors change dramatically. A little PERL script (I am pretty new to PHP and PERL is way easier for me) that saves to a flatfile which serves as an alternate css snippet for text control. So far so good.
It was the float value you mentioned that did it. I was too close to see the obvious. Seems to be working well now with just some minor cross browser differences. I do like firefox better but, my other sites stats show that ~90% of the visitors are IE. Far better than 3% of firefoxers two years ago. Surfers are getting wiser to IE issues and using firefox more and more!
Keeping a site appearing "identical" cross browser is a chore for me. One or the other is easy. I spend more time on this area than a complete graphics wrapper/theme. I do not make sites, I make tube amps. So all this is quite a learning curve for me.
Thanks again for your response! Really helped out. :clap: