I made a copy of the ows.css and put it somewhere outside of the
_layouts directory. I have some tabbed navigation I created that I
want to replace the stock top level navigation with. I noticed that
the site I created to test this on calls the ows.css. So I deleted
that stylesheet ref and pointed it at my new one which is basically
the same ows.css with my divs for this #header added to it. I went
ahead and put the 5 gifs I am using for this navigation in the
1003/images folder and my css points to them.
But I still don't see the images (buttons). Is doing it this way a
no-no? I plan to have it made into a proper webpart, but want to try
out a few things before I send it to our developers.

On my page I deleted this code:
<SPSWC:CategoryNavigationWebPart runat="server" id="HorizontalNavBar"/>

And added this header div:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
<div id="header">
<!--webbot bot="PurpleText" PREVIEW="This is just where these links
currently point to on /devmeckweb/default.aspx" -->
<ul>
<li id="current"><a href="../../../default.aspx">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="../../../News/default.aspx">News</a></li>
<li><a href="../../../SiteDirectory/default.aspx">Departments</a></li>
<li><a
href="http://external_web_page/cohr/myhr/index.htm">MyHR</a></li>
<li><a href="../../../Forms/default.aspx">Forms</a></li>
<li><a href="../../../Topics/default.aspx">Topics</a></li>

</ul>
</div>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Code I added to my ows.css is:

#header {
float:left;
width:100%;
background:#DAE0D2 url('_layouts/1033/images/tab_nav/bg.gif')
repeat-x bottom;
font-size:93%;
line-height:normal
}
#header ul {
margin:0;
padding:10px 10px 0;
list-style:none;
}
#header li {
float:left;
background:url('_layouts/1033/images/tab_nav/left.gif')
no-repeat left top;
margin:0;
padding-left:9px; padding-right:0; padding-top:0; padding-bottom:0
}
#header a {
display:block;
background:url('_layouts/1033/images/tab_nav/right.gif')
no-repeat right top;
padding-left:6px; padding-right:15px; padding-top:5px;
padding-bottom:4px
}
#header #current {
background-image:url('_layouts/1033/images/tab_nav/left_on.gif');
}
#header #current a {
background-image:url('_layouts/1033/images/tab_nav/right_on.gif');
padding-bottom:5px
}
---------------------------------------------------------------------