Hay, no you got it - quite spot on really, if I had set this up I would do just that, find the imported file's template and add the css at the top.... however... and this is a big however ...

...the backend of this cms brings in the content of the iframe by an sql query to oracle db to bring in the content div that makes up the content of the page the user wishes to edit. At the point the backend defines what is going to be edited it is purely a php/sql query to oracle db... the db stores divs as separate assets (the app server builds pages on the fly from designs made up of xhtml and css and the div assets stored in db for content)..

... in short I cannot apply a 'template' with xhtml or css or js in the backend to 'wrap' the content being dynamically brought into the iframe...

I was interested in the dynamic applying css with php... but as the iframe has it's own dom I'm starting to think I cannot apply css to the content of the iframe from the page that contains the iframe...