--NEVERMIND-- Removed the trouble spot...

You've likely fallen victim to IE's 3 pixel jog bug. Your exact fit doesn't take into account that IE thinks there should be a phantom 3px extra margin on the content side. Give (in IE-Win only) a -3px margin to the float element.

/* hide from IE-Mac \*/
* html #secondary {
    margin-right: -3px;
    }
/* */

To counter the doubled margin bug, simply do {display: inline;}.

Also, there rarely any reason to cascade ids.

#main #content #flash {margin: 0; padding: 0;} is redundant. #flash is #flash no matter who its daddy is.

You should validate your code. Fix the comments. UAs are forgiving, but in the future, the xml in xhtml will barf on them.

<embed> is not a part of html. See ALA article for getting right with the gods of html.

cheers,

gary

KK, thanks for your reply and the info on the Embed tag.

I pulled the <embed> tag out as described in the article. I fixed my comments, pulled redundant css names and validated against the validator.

Current problems ::

1) The validator keeps throwing an error about my form -- specifically, my inputs

The code ::

<form id="search" action="#">
<input type="text" name="search_text" id="search_text" value="Search Shakedown" />
<input type="submit" name="GO" id="submit" value="GO" />
</form>

The validator error ::

The mentioned element is not allowed to appear in the context in which you've placed it; the other mentioned elements are the only ones that are both allowed there and can contain the element mentioned. This might mean that you need a containing element, or possibly that you've forgotten to close a previous element.

One possible cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a block-level element (such as "<p>" or "<table>") inside an inline element (such as "<a>", "<span>", or "<font>").

2) The Flash file is in place, but I still have gaps in both IE and Firefox. IE gives me a ~3px gap to the left and FireFox gives me a ~3px gap at the bottom.

Any ideas on these? (NOTE -- Display inline on the flash object didn't work at all)

Again -- thanks everyone for all your input thus far. It has certainly been a major help in my development!

I am soooo close to being off and running, but these gaps keep getting in my way!

Put the hack on the float element;

/* \*/
* html #secondary {
    margin-right: -3px;
    }
/* */

Add that *exactly* to the stylesheet after the #secondary styles.

Remove '_margin-left:15px;' from #secondary and replace with 'display: inline;'

None of that belongs on #flash.

cheers,

gary