well then! the box model.

There once was a box, and a box within in a box, and a box within that box and a box within tha......

So thats basically the scoop with the box model using a tableless DIV tag setup to layout your miraculous web pages. The margin is a invisible barrier between the outside of the box and your content INCLUDING the background image, padding is within the margin and ignores the background image just pushing in your embedded images/flash and the text. You can toss a border around either of these buggers.