Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Since I'm the one who did most of the rework (under Paul's direction), I'll try and answer some of the questions that have been raised.
Omitting the width tags on the tables
will allow the pages to expand on higher resolutions (above 800x600 - the design point) but won't do anything for lower res because the menu images won't fit anyway; you'd still have to scroll horizontally. For consistency and readability, I prefer having things as fixed on the pages as possible. And most people find large blocks of text easier to read if it doesn't spread too wide. Obviously, the trade off is vertical scrolling but you've got that anyway because of the amount of stuff that Paul has to say on each page
Yes, the menu thing is done with javascript using mouseover events but there are no "sneaky tricks" that defeat browser caching. I can connect via 28.8 modem and quite painfully notice when things don't cache! There was a problem with the script working properly in Netscape but I have corrected that. Thanks for pointing it out.
As for pre-loading the images into an array, a quick look at the javascript source will show that this is exactly what is being done. I have tested this by starting with a cleared cache and disconnecting the modem before rolling over any images and it works fine.
We looked into server side processing and I agree that it may have been a better solution but apparently Paul's web provider does not support what we wanted to do. Paul could comment on that angle more as he talked to them, not me.