One pixel can make a very big difference. I have included the slicing that I did in ImageReady for this exercise. Note how the two menu items include enough distance below the bar to include all of the drop shadow. Also, the third slice is the one that we will use as a background image. It must be the exact same height as the menu items and should be taken from the middle of an image when possible.
Effects often produce small changes at the beginning and end of the image.
In this case, I am going to need only a one cell and one row table. The bar will expand or contract according to the amount of space it has to fill. You can see an exact copy of this table to the left, but contained within a much smaller space. See a simpler page and view the code . Netscape reserves the room required for the scroll bar, even when it is not needed.