Temporary Ending Point For My Tirades

1. a:hover problems For some reason I have inconsistent behavior regarding this. Whenever I view my LiveJournal with Internet Explorer, I see that all links whenever hovered over, change their color to white, like they are supposed to with the modification made in my stylesheet. Whenever I view my LiveJournal in Mozilla FireFox, such hover behavior is limited to the 'respond.' and 'journal entry:' links only. I do not get the hover effect over the links in my components (the ones on the side), or on the community name/friend name when in friend view..
   
   Moreover...
   In Internet Explorer, whenever a link has been clicked, and consequently *viewed*, the hover-over nolonger changes the color. Also, I am no longer seeing the 'dashed' look with the hover-over link.
   
   Here is the stylesheet, at least the portions regarding links. My questions for this section follow:
   

   a {
   color: $*entry_link;               // link color
   text-decoration: none;              // link text-decoration [none, underline, overline, etc]
   }
   		
   a:hover {
   color: $*header_link;               // hover link color
   text-decoration: bold;         // hover link text-decoration
   border-bottom: dotted #202336 2px
   }
   
   a:visited {
   color: $*entry_link;       // visited link color
   }
   		
   a.calendarLink {
   color: $*calendar_link;            // calendar link color, "active days" (days with posts)
   }
   
   a.header {
   color: $*header_link;              // header font color
   }
   
   a.headerLinks {
   color: $*header_link;              // header link color
   }
   

   
   
   
   
   
   • Why do the component links (the ones in the side boxes) not have the changed hover-color? Is there a comp.a:hover i'm not aware of?
     
   • Is my syntax for the 'dashed bottom link' (the border-bottom: contained in a:hover) ??
     
   • Do I have to make a a:visited:hover to cover all the bases so Internet Explorer users no longer get the 'darkened' color? Note: The colors specified for anchors and visited anchors are the same.
     
   
   



2. transparency: Right now I do theoretically have the code in place to make the components and the entries transparent. Although in FireFox and IE, neither one of which are displayed as transparent. Although I have removed the silly 'under the userid icon-column completely transparent' fluke, don't ask me how because ultimately I never changed anything, nonetheless I no longer have transparent entries.
   
   Here's the appropriate stylesheet segments:
   
   

   .entryHolderBg {
   background-color: $*comp_bgcolor; // entry holder (holds userpic and entry text holder) background color
   color: $*comp_fgcolor;            // entry holder font color
   padding-top: 7px;                 // top margin, in pixels
   padding-right: 7px;               // right margin, in pixels
   padding-left: 7px;                // left margin, in pixels
   padding-bottom: 7px;              // bottom margin, in pixels
   filter:alpha(opacity=70); -moz-opacity:0.70;
   }
   
   .entry {
   padding-top: 7px;                  // entry (entry text area) top margin, in pixels
   padding-right: 7px;                // right margin, in pixels
   padding-left: 7px;                 // left margin, in pixels
   padding-bottom: 7px;               // bottom margin, in pixels
   background-color: $*entry_bgcolor; // entry background color
   font-size: 11px;                   // entry font size
   }
   
   td.entry {
   filter:alpha(opacity=70); -moz-opacity:0.70;
   }
   
   .compBg {
   background-color: $*comp_bgcolor;  // component background color
   filter:alpha(opacity=70); -moz-opacity:0.70;
   }
   

   
   
   
   
   
   • Do I have to add the opacity filters to the entry section, and possibly other comp sections?
     
   
   
   
3. Centered NavBar: As you'll notice when viewing my LiveJournal, the navigational bar is not centered. While I havent decided if I actually want it that way or not, I am somewhat disturbed by the fact that it is aligned as 'centered' in my stylesheet.
   
   

   .header {
   background-image: url("$*SITEROOT/palimg/component/top-bg.gif/pt$palimg"); // background image for header
   background-repeat: repeat-x; // repeat background image horizontally
   height: 25px;                // ?
   text-align: center;
   }
   

   
   
   
   
   
   • Should I have placed the text-align in header-item?
     
   
   
   
4. Scrolling Entries: I'm looking at the override that enables the scrolling entries 'feature' and I'm wondering if there is any way to tailor this specifically for the friendspage view? If I placed an if-than inside the function, but around everything in it, would that screw up the way normal page entries are displayed?



5. transparent images: I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but there are some cases in which usericons are transparent but then aren't shown as transparent in other places. For me this has popped up between my [displayed user-icon] and the [entry-picture]. It usually gets filled in by the user 'color'. Which actually may be the point/answer/reason for this. Is there any way to.. not show the user-background colors for the images? but only for the user names?

• Does anyone know of a 'S2 Component StyleSheet Showcase' type of community? Where people say, 'hey guys I got this cool effect on my livejournal and here's what I modified in order to do it!' ?
  
• Should I be defining things that aren't necessarily working *like the hover-links* with a CLASS="blah blah" section?
  
• Where's a really good comprehensive CSS site to learn from? I'd like to learn how to modify all kinds of stuff, but I'm kinda what you could call an 'advanced-beginner'. Eh, maybe i'll just flounder along.
  
• Has anyone come up with any good modifications of the 'summary' component? I'm tempted to go back to it, yes I've toggled in the short while it's been out. Oh well, no biggie.

All in all the intent of this post was to help rectify/condense some of my more recent *rantings to c_h for help*. I realize that repeated indescript posts begging for assistance aren't the best idea and I figured this might be a little more polite and consequently maybe even generate some feedback. Thanks for your time, and I hope you might feel compelled to offer forth some help, or at the very least little 'look what I did with my LJ' snippets that you are proud of.