I googled quick to find a decent tutorial on Float, as this property causes grief to a lot of people.
http://www.bigbaer.com/css_tutorials...l.tutorial.htm

That one came up, and it was actually a great read. Float should work properly in newer browsers, if you are using relativley old, unupdated versions of browsers, float will not appear to work correctly.

float should not break alignment in a div as you mentioned unless there is not enoughtext to make the div expand far enough to encase the picture. If the picture stays outside of the div, I would say there is another problem. If you need to post your code go for it.

Let me know if anyof that helps
Bipper