I kind of understand your problem with the example. The CSS methods they used are horrible. As I've never made a CSS tabbed menu like that, and I'll probably use something similar in a website I create in the future, here is the same type of menu, only with common sense involved.

The this CSS basically acheives the same thing, only it's less than a third of the size of the example you gave.

http://ryanfait.com/menu/

I haven't tested in IE... I'm on vacation so I don't have access to my computer. However, unless I forgot something, I don't see any reason why this shouldn't look the same (other than it not being centered on the page). Let me know if there's a problem and I'll do my best to fix it though.