I've been meaning to reply to this but have had to do my monthly meatworld nonsense and have kind of been feeling like crap/spaced out. I'm going to review the tut I posted above but with NP++ open and work through the exercises (as well as cross reference with the W3schools guides). It does seem like the "class" CSS stuff should work but it simply didn't for what I was doing and it may be a result of the weird crap I'm trying to do. My brain is back on it (or will be tomorrow at least... I hope) and I'll post some sample code if I can't figure it out.
 
Thing is I do really think I'm doing something bizarre that isn't exactly how most would go about designing things. Like I don't think content within the Pre tag would be screwed with the way I am doing it but it is important to functionality to me. It looks slick/clean and works well but if I can somehow make it work with Class id stuff that might make things easier. I'm getting the feeling that most people wouldn't use links within the pre tag AND screw with the link fonts AND try to code in tooltips AND move it all with relative positioning AND etc, etc... Usually that stuff is just to show code or ASCII art or whatever. Not be fully interactive.
 
Either way I'll slam through it and I definitely appreciate the help.

By the way, i noticed earlier in the thread you mentioned you use the "save as HTML" feature in MS word.  My advice on that is DON'T.  Word processor programs often add weird code that is non-standard and even worse than the code spit out by programs like Dreamweaver.  I have used Dreamweaver and even tried their lighter version (I think it's called Muse).  Both have their advantages and disadvantages.  The thing I like best about dreamweaver is it's management and preview capabilities.  Considering Dreamweaver has an option to simply use a text editing mode, one could easily use Dreamweaver in the way you would use notepad++.  I think I use notepad++ because I rarely have to manage large sites that a program like Dreamweaver would potentially lend an advantage to managing.

That's what I used Dreamweaver for, as a fancy coding environment (like Visual Studio). I tried their WYSIWYG mode once and was never happy with the results.

sharke, agree for me on a personal level.  I can say when I have been forced to use Dreamweaver in corp environment, I found the companies were never sticklers for using the WYSIWIG environmnet so I mostly just pasted code in from other text based code editors.  I will give it credit for handling good code just fine.  I'm assuming (more like hoping) it has improved since last time I used it.  i don't do much web design anymore because of this:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

Oh... I'm not using Wordpad or any other formatting word processor stuff. I just wondered whether it was a decent workaround but as I suspected and you guys confirmed it spits out sloppy code.
 
Notepad++ is where it's at for me right now. Very nice program.

Beepster
Notepad++ is where it's at for me right now. Very nice program.

++1 on that one!