hi - at this site here - http://www.toolhire2day.co.uk/ i have implemented a new header - trouble is that the table elements in the header seem to be inheriting padding or margins from somewhere and i cant for the life of me see where it is coming from - the ones i am talking about are the ones in the head navigation (home - find a trader - post a job etc...) and the 3 bullet points to the right of the header (home improvement - conveyancing - national tool hire) - in Dreamweaver they are ok- as they are when previed on their own - but when transplanted into here they are causing a major issue (big white blocks above the element - i have looked several times in Firebug and just cant seem to detect where that extra padding is coming from and wondered if anyone had any ideas please??

Firstly you should really be using tables for anything but tabular data. For your header navigation, use a <ul> instead.

Margins and padding aren't normally inherited unless you want them to be. But in the case of tables, each browser has it's own defaults. By default they normally come with some cellpadding and cellspace, so set these to zero at your first <table> tag.

Thanks - the problem stems from the fact that the header was designed by someone else who just LOVES tables ! Much to my dismay - so i am totally with you on that!
I have managed to sort most things out - but now the thing i cant get my head round is that the top menu doesnt seem to be taking into account the background i specified you can see the black overspill where its seemingly not putting in the background - one i have that fixed ill be a happy lad - but the more i look at it the further the answer seems to be

The table thing is a serious problem with this site - a modern business website should have the sense to stay away from tabular design and stick to CSS, and the guy who designed the site should have known that. I notice that this is also the same site that up until recently had several thousand keywords stuffed into a marquee at the bottom of the page - whoever this company have hired to do their SEO is really taking the mick! Either that or they're sending their advice from the 90's

I take it you mean the parent site