finally got the new design for my site up and running and working (all except for one part in the extra section–the links don’t want to work >.<). while doing this new design i learned how to make .png image files finally work in IE (every other broweser displays png files fine with its opacity, but IE has yet to support them). using one of IE’s special filter classes you can make png files display with its opacity (the way i got the white faded background). the only problem is that using this filter as a background is that it makes any links not work. the solution is a position:relative style around the links. this worked fine for all my pages except for the extra section. still need to figure that one out though :p