Your answers to your post is listed below -
Skingradient - not tall enough - it's just not going to work - you need another image - if you set the size to be taller - and it's set at repeat-x in the css it will only stretch widthways... so if there's not enough space, then open the gradient in photoshop and stretch it a bit more to the height you require - that should kill off the unwanted spaces.
The reason there is spacing below and above your skingradient is you are making the cell the right size but the image used is stretching widthways, not height. So, that extra space should in theory go, if I'm reading the problem correclty - if you make the gradient taller. that's the nature of CSS.
If you were to create a .skinobject class and set link classes as well, you'll get the colour font you want. By default, none specified links are purple and blue, which is why your links don't change color.
In the skinning document - there is information on the class that the Search text will use. - It uses a class called skinobjects by default..
/* Search Elements */
.SkinObject {color: #404040;}
a.SkinObject, a.SkinObject:active {text-decoration: none;color: #467599;font-weight: normal;}
a.SkinObject:hover {text-decoration: none;color: #404040;font-weight: normal;}
a.SkinObject, a.SkinObject:visited, {text-decoration: none;color: #467599;font-weight: normal;}
Now this code I've provided here has a mix of colours - I've just taken from another file of mine, to show as an example.
But what this will do is set all your links like - search, login, user, copyright, terms, privacy, date to this look and feel since by default the use the skinobject class.
What you can do is assign a specific class in the xml file (if you're using xml/html) for the search function and override the behaviour of the default settings.. and call it something unique like .search instead.
The reason I'm suggesting this is because you might have different colour backgrounds on the site and require different colour links.. In my opinion, it's normally LightBG & DarkBG classes that need to be defined in a skin - and that's what I do for most of mine - I put in my own classes and override the default settings since I want complete control over every element of the design.
It's late here so I won't be posting in the morning, but see how you go with that information. I"ve got free skins you can download and take apart and get ideas from - currently I'm redoing them, but there's enough there to get you started.
I can't tell you how many hours I've spent knocking my head on walls trying to learn things that just don't seem to make sense, but believe me, they will all come together eventually - and as you see, you've already moved ahead from the previous posts.
Nina Meiers