thanks Balinor I'll have a play around with this
I tried the code in post #271 which had some interesting effects
it displays the category thumnail and a header link
unfortunately it doesn't show the category description text
it seems to have swapped sides with the lefthand navigation which has swapped places with the category pane...
looks like I need to make some changes
got any links to good posts about how to swap modules like navigation around using these .tpl files?
many thanks Nick