Menu Manager clarification please

[WillNut]

Sorry for being a bit of a noob but i am.
I have 2 sites currently under construction using cmsms and have yet to use it, am i missing something or setting the sites up wrong?.

Currently i set up a template then have the main styling of the site as a stylesheet and also the navigation as a separate stylesheet both linked to the main template.

How do i bring the menu manager into play or do i actually need too?

One of the site was originally designed (not by me unfortunately) to use styled buttons for the side navigation and from what i have read in the documentation etc the menu manager would be used for this as it enables you to assign ids to parent and child links in the menu so a corresponding image can be used instead of the text, but again how do you link this into your template?

Apologies if i'm not making any sense but there is a lot to get your head around when you just come from a design background, thanks...

[cyberman]

Maybe this can help you to understand

http://themes.cmsmadesimple.org/menu_ma ... yling.html
http://themes.cmsmadesimple.org/Image_menu.html