Well, typos aside your help was just that.

Now I have tested the code against Firefox and Chrome which seems to be ignoring the html code. IE8 works just fine. Any thoughts anyone?

I figured it out:at least it seems so.

I had taken out the ".ngg-widget-slideshow" figuring I only wanted the widget. When I added it back in all is working just fine: wierd.

What you are doing with that code is centering the slideshow within the widget. That's why you needed that other code.

any recommendations for a plugin to make a custom widget in the body of a page?

How about the Widgets on Pages plugin?

I've been following this thread as I was looking to do something similar. I didn't know about the Widgets On Pages plugin.

That could be very useful. :)