Every parent always wants to have children that are unique, unless your last name is CSS. Ok now that my stupid opening is out of the way :P....

How can I make it so that a child element doesnt inherit the properties of the parent element.

Another question as well (not actually CSS but oh well). <ul> arent loaded like tables are they? If I use a <ul> in order to hold together some trickier parts of my layout (nothing major I promise) will it load each <li> seperately or wait for all of it to be done loading.

Thanks everyone.

How can I make it so that a child element doesnt inherit the properties of the parent element

You can't, just as it is in the gene pool, inheritance is the fundamental nature of CSS, the cascading bit of CSS.

And nope, <ul>s don't load like tables.