Width of main layout

[dyingtosaythis]

Hi guys, we've just got ourselves Actinic Business Multi User V8 at work (planning to upgrade to v9 at a later date when any kinks with the program have been ironed out). I'm pretty much new to the whole Actinic interface and was after a bit of advice.
I've been playing with the layouts, mainly trying to establish a layout for products so I can begin to input them. I created a new layout for clothes based on the standard layout with image on the right. However, when I add my description, this sticks to a pretty thin column width, I'd prefer this to be wider, so that more of the width of the page would be filled (picture attached) There's probably a really simple solution to this, but I'm as yet to find it! I've tried altering widths in actinic.css, but this appears to pull the page apart.
Another alternative would be to add a column to the right hand side of the layout, mirroring the column on the left, as this would reduce the size of the main layout. However, through looking through the forum, I've picked up that this is quite a task to do! Any advice?
I apologise if this thread has been answered elsewhere, but any advice would be a great help.

[dyingtosaythis]

In reply to my own thread, I've found firefox's web developer a great help when altering section widths, but I would really love to add a right hand column to the layout, I'm working with contemporary at the moment. I've seen suggestions on the forum for people to use the clean css layout, however I just don't like these ones as much as the contemporary layout. Did attempt to bring my own css layout from dreamweaver into Actinic, but it went to pot and pulled the layout apart

[jont]

The width available for the product text and image come from the main Settings | Site Options which you can possibly increase to allow more room. The product image is quite large so reducing the width would allow more space or you could try floating the image so the ext wraps around it if long.

The contemporary theme is quite CSS orientated so adding a right hand column should be a piece of cake. Firstly increase the width of #maincontent to around 1000px.

The main content is brought in using .contemporary_right_column. Find this in the outer layout and just before this add a new <div> for the right hand content. In the actinic.css set the width of the new <div> and float it right... the main centre coloumn floats right as standard and should sit alongside the new right column ... you may need to declare a margin to the central area to stand it away from the right column (don't forget issues with some versions of IE doubling floated margin widths).

Starter for 10.

HTH

[dyingtosaythis]

Hey Jont, it finally clicked last night that if I reduced the image size that the description will take more width - such an obvious solution! Thanks for the advice, its a great help, I've built CSS sites before but I was just a bit wary of tampering with actinic incase I made everything go crazy!
Thanks for your advice, your a star!

[dyingtosaythis]

I tried it and it worked to an extent, but my new column appears to be somehow stuck in the main right hand field (when I enter content into new column it knocks the main product layout further down the page)

[jont]

Sounds like a "clear" issue in the CSS... this can also arise due to tabled layouts which don't always mix that well with CSS.