Where in the plugin code would you paste that code above? Also, did the fix ever work out?
thanks Marcel! The fix plus the clear errors in the misc settings cleared everything up so far.
went into the editing of the plugin pages and changed the wp-about-author/wp-about-author.php file.
search for the words: "style="background-color:%%borderbg%%;"
change %%borderbg%% to #XXXXXX replacing XXXXXX with the the hex color value you want to be the background. worked for me!
having the same problem in both chrome 24.0.1312.57 and firefox 19.
