slideshow template styling

I am just trying to customize the slider template, but all the elements in the custom style editor that I write get over written by the functional.css. For example, I am trying to make each slide look like:

<slide>
<image – align left>
<title – align right><description – underneath title>
</slide>

I set the widths of the image, title & description to 50% and floated them accordingly; but the functional.css overwrites my setting and resets the width back to 100% (default)

What can I do to ensure my settings are the ones used?

(P.S.: how come I can’t float the “slideshow_description_box” to the right?)

http://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/slideshow-jquery-image-gallery

Thanks!