In IE6/XP it displays as a table with regular text links. How does it turn into an image in other browsers?

As for why they're doing it, it's because MS HTML editors try to treat the browser window as an application surface.[1] Which means they try to absolute-position everything, and fix the fonts the way they look in your development environment.

To answer my own question above, I would guess Publisher expects that IE is going to render the way you have it in your dev GUI, and if it detects other browsers it renders gifs so it can override your preferences. Have you tried changing your client string to IE and see what it looks like?





[1] I had a Visual Studio acolyte tell me that when explaining why he couldn't make a trivial change to the HTML. He didn't actually know HTML all that well, and wouldn't know how to change what VS was putting out anyway. Yes, his primary job was web development.