alt131 - 8:53 am on Jun 5, 2011 (gmt 0)

If you've never had a browser merrily disregard something that's supposed to be the default, you've been very very lucky or just haven't tried enough browsers. It's not always MSIE, either.

that got my attention until I realised the "you" was generic - not "you" at SuzyUK specifically. Suzy, please don't ever get the urge to share the list of browsers/versions you've coded for - there's still a forum limit on post size ;)

This is slightly off what we think the original issue was, but I think still relevant points for later readers, and a lot of work has gone in as well.

so I pasted in my own xhtml boilerplate ... It is IDENTICAL to yours, but the validator shut up.

Yup, given my issue with the document being validated as html the first (and sometimes second) time, I wondered if there were some stray hidden characters in there. I didn't have time to check - but I suspect you "got it in one" by pasting in a replacement.

In terms of explicitly setting borders multiple times, to state the obvious, a border isn't inherited by default. However, tables are different, and there is also the frame attribute, so webkit's default stylesheet explicitly sets border-colour:gray and inherit for table elements and the ie6-9 default is "grey-ish" (the colour changed between versions) - so not just ie6. A quick test in Op11/winsafari5/ie8/FF4 produces this:

• With border="1"
  a default table/td border of outset/inset, at the default black/gray colours, except for winSafari and ie which are the browser default gray/grey-ish.
  
• frame="border" (no colour)
  as above, but with no border visible for td there is only a single border "box"
  
• With border="1" + table {colour:red}
  a default table/td border of outset/inset, colour=red, but in ff it is visually a dirty red/gray mix, winSafari and ie the browser default gray and grey-ish, and only Op is really red.
  
• frame="border" + table {color:red}
  as above