I have edited line 1315 of classes/htmlTools.class.php because the w3c compliance check does not like 'absmiddle' for vertical alignment of an image. I tried changing it to 'middle' but didn't like the result and so I settled on 'top' as the best cosmetic compromise that keeps the site xhtml valid.
Line 1315 was changed from:
$text = vmCommonHTML::imageTag( $image, '', 'absmiddle' ). ' '.$text;
to:
$text = vmCommonHTML::imageTag( $image, '', 'top' ). ' '.$text;
Regards
Phil