Please look at:

http://www.donaldclarkemusicbox.com/index.php

This is a site I am porting to WordPress/Atahualpha

You can see my progress here:

http://donclarkemusicbox.simple-helix.net/

I want the menu in the ATA version to show the bg color of each entry in the same way it is done in the original. Please note, I know how to create a common bg for all the menu items. That's not what I want. I want each item to have its own bg color, just like the original.

Possible?

I don't see a menu in the new site and the old site has a sidebar menu(?) - do you plan on using a menu widget and have it in the sidebar?

why not use firebug to look at the old site and see what they are using?

It was called Categories but contained some of the same items. I've renamed it Menu for clarity.

I appreciate the suggestion about learning how the original was done, but that does not tell me know how to apply it. The menu is done in simple HTML with each item (each link) in it's own cell.

I don't even know where to start to do that to the ATA, The menu is created using Categories because Some items linked to a major section of the iste, such as a multi-chapter book or the authors blog.

if you want to apply a style to AL widgets, use the 'Style WIDGETS' option
if you just want to apply the styling to a single widget, code your CSS Selectors and rules and put them in the CSS Inserts option.

You can use Firebug to test what you need and then put it in.

Also it seems to me that you should create a WP custom menu (you can mix pages and categories and external links) and use teh custom menu widget. At least that is what I would do.