On that page (in it's current stage) I have error reporting turned on and without entering a zip code on the index page, lots of variables aren't set and therefore many errors are thrown. Most of those validation errors are php's errors using the <b> and </b> tags or other things in the errors. When error reporting is turned off, I only get an invalid doc type declaration. (Dreamweaver 8 defaults...what can I say...)
After much googling, I have been playing with allowTransparency:true; (which didn't work) and removing the transparency (which hides my background-image all together) but I am noticing now that sometimes I get a partially transparent image (the border looks much lighter...but it's there sometimes) and sometimes only a few of the images are hidden (occasionally I'm getting the top right corner and some of the top border that repeats over the x axis). However, clicking on any part of the missing background image at any time brings the whole thing into focus correctly. This is really strange.
Thank you very much for your help and I will work on getting the doctype declaration to work. I need some remedial html training, I guess...
Worst case scenario, all those "table" looking things are 1 of 2 sizes, so I'll just create a single image for the top and it's corners and force that to display somehow...