I have an anchor over an image, a subsequent <p>, and a seond image. I'm trying to validate xhtml transitional, and it says, for each of the three elements:

the format is <a> <h3....><img /> <p> <h3....><img /> </a>

what is a good solution for this?

There isn't a "solution", per se. The structure you're trying to create isn't a valid structure, for several reasons. Your H3 tags aren't closed. Your paragraph tags aren't closed. You cannot place block-level elements, such as paragraphs, within inline elements, such as anchors.

You also can't wrap multiple elements inside of a single anchor.

Please describe what you're trying to do, as the code you posted as an example of your format is syntactically meaningless.

thanks for the reply. I used a class with centering and 0 padding for a <p> which includes the individual anchors, and validates okay...

is there a way to keep firefox from putting that box around the image anchor? that dotted line? it's really annoying me. thanks again.

You seem to be asking several questions. Please narrow your posts down to a single, specific question, and I'll try to answer it.

Paragraphs can contain anchors. Anchors cannot contain paragraphs, as in your original post.

With your latest post, I think you're referring to the border property? If you don't want a border, for your image or anchor, apply the "border-style: none" CSS property to those elements.

The CSS style you want to eliminate the border around images in an anchor tag is:

a img { border: none }

actually i have to use a {outline:none} for firefox, but i havent tried to use "a img {....}"