oneniner,

Thanks for your suggestions. It may be that DNN's SOLPARTMENU can't do what i want it to do. I haven't been able to find a skin that does exactly this. I have found them that do one or the other of the manifestations of color we've seen here.

As far as I can tell, the "color" attribute in the some CSS classes are ignored by DNN. For example the ones I am using for the breadcrumb above takes the background image but takes the text color from another CSS class.

In the end it may be that I have to modify the base code, write my own, or get a thrid party menu. If I was designing DNNs menus I wouldn't have designed them the way they are designed. I would have allowed any menu item to be designated by class in a CSS file irrespective of whether its a submenu, mainmenu or not. The idea of allowing menu styles to be controlled from a high level grouping via a CSS was a good one. However,what needed to be added was allowing an override ability grouped by a combination of ID, and states. That way you could control the style of any menu in any state and override some if the need occurs.

Thanks for your help.

Joe