BIG BAD WOLF: I have found there are some good books out there to get you started but the big thing to really get to know it is to "practice, practice, practice" AND to search for people who have done something similar to what you want and change their code to learn from it
:)
playBunny: Not an expert but from what I have seen it is not possible to do it exactly the way you want to. It maybe easier to use the map as a background and put the text on top or otherwise use the z-index for layering. If something is in a div, it pretty much needs to stay there. There are ways of using float and clear that may help as well. http://cssplay.co.uk/ has a lot of ways of using css to do a lot of neat things but...
Good Luck!
temo: A few versions of Windows ago, I removed IE, and had severe computer problems. MS at least at that time had made IE necessary for several of their other programs to function....
Eriisa: When I reformated my hd and reinstalled windows xp(firewall issues with XP & norton...) MSN messenger installed thinking it was needed to help with windows updates so it may not be possible to completely shut it off...