JavaScript / CSS Wizards Please Help

I am arguing with a vendor by proxy about keeping text scalable.  I need
help since I know just enough JavaScript to get in trouble.  I have intense
dislike of JavaScript so I have not learned as well as I like.  Anyone have
an authoritative but readable and structured reference that they like?  The
resources I have found do not lend themselves to accessible at all.  I am
look for something like what the WDG folks have done for HTML.
<http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/>

The vendor is using a public domain menu which I could NOT get to use
relative units.  A discussion and download links to this file (fw_menu.js)
can be found at URL:
<http://www.macromedia.com/support/fireworks/ts/documents/commented_js_file.
htm>

1)  Does anyone on this list see a quick way to make the invoked menus
scaleable?
2)  My idea is to invoke the calls to "new menu(...)" using a calculated
number.  Is there a JavaScript/DOM variable for determining the current text
size (in pixels)?

Also, the vendor is balking at using CSS in the header menu.  The only
problem I see is trailing horizontal line on the bottom of the current
design that meshes (on the left) with a circular graphic.  Is there a way
(using, I guess,  CSS) to get a line that floats behind everything else on
the page -- and allows graphics to lie on top of it?

Thanks very much.

Bruce Bailey

P.S.,  The site in question is accessible and 508 compliant, but we are
trying for AAA.  Whoever negotiated the contract is paying by the hour
rather than the job -- so we are paying for the contractor's learning curve.