that did the trick, all rows are now displayed.
i updated the css so the test page displays with all of the rows.
this prompts me to ask further questions if you can indulge me (or if you know of a good article).
1. The fix appears to work visually, but when i look at the code in firebug, I notice the following...
The news headlines and content are supplied using a repeat region.
Within this repeat region, i have set up my CSS container for the newsbox, which contains 3 further divs, calendar, headline and story, which repeat when the php page is sent to the browser
When I look at the code with Firebug, i get the first 3 newsbox divs laid out as expected, and then the remaining items are embedded within the fourth newsbox div.
2. the footer now sits nicely below the last row, but without sufficient white space.
I tried adding margin and padding to the footer div with no appreciable difference, is the positioning of the footer affected by other divs ?
3. The spacing in IE is much tighter than in FF, what steps can I take to fix this ?
most of my CSS layouts have been made using css sculptor, and like when using many 'wizards', it is easy to get dependent on them, not fully understanding how the code works.:(
Thanks again