As we move away from browsers dependent on tables and toward browsers that don't need them for page layout, we'll have to make styles and tables peacefully coexist. Tables and styles don't typically get along very well. This is especially true in Netscape Navigator, which treats tables almost as though they're separate documents. Thanks to this special bit of weirdness, styles generally aren't inherited into Navigator tables. Here is where most new CSS authors get into trouble.
Nothing happens because where the table starts, the inheritance stops.
In Explorer, however, the font might make it into the table if it isn't too complex, but the color almost certainly won't. Fortunately, there's a simple fix for this problem. By doing so, you effectively circumvent the problem of tables relying on inheritance just assign the styles directly to the cells of the table instead. Of course, there are other issues with tables and styles. You might want to set the background color of a table, for example, or maybe just parts of it.