I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that there is no resemblance whatsoever between new-web-page-using-CSS viewed in IE and new-web-page-using-CSS viewed in Mozilla Firebird.
EDIT: Fixed it!
Moral of story (1): Never paste sample code without running it through W3C first.
Moral of story (2): Always include a link to that 'life' thing. You never know when you might need it.
PS: my CSS validates. Doesn't work, but validates ...
ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.