Template Column Issues

[brycej2]

I am having trouble figuring out how to expand my main/center column to fill the space that the right column use to occupy. I disabled the right column with this flag

$flag_disable_right = true; 

in tpl_main_page.php and I don't know where to go from here.

This is the site: https://housing.k-state.edu/quikcats

[kuroi]

That's because this Template Monster template's stylesheet explicitly sets the center column width to be 350px (class m1) and 352px (class cont_center).

The template has clearly been designed as a three column layout, and coded that way. This is unnecessarily inflexible and reflects poor implementation, as does the ridiculous extent of the nested divs that will be a real pain to wade through for normally simple changes, and the use of CSS features that Internet Explorer doesn't recognize, which is why the site behaves differently in IE to how it behaves in other browsers.

I wish you luck.

[brycej2]

thanks, looks like I need it.

[kuroi]

I'd recommend Firefox with the Firebug extension to help you to navigate the template and see what's going on behind the scenes and a case of beer for medicinal purposes.

[brycej2]

I just changed the width of the two style classes you pointed out and that seemed to do the trick, and that firebug extension is pretty slick.

thanks for your help.

[kuroi]

A general tip that may make things worse in the short term but save oodles of heartache later, would be to remove the display:table-cell from cont_center (and indeed any others that you may find). Internet Explorer doesn't recognize it, so as long as it's there and recognized by the other browsers, they're going to be working differently to IE. It's generally better to find one solution to the layout issues that works cross-browser. Otherwise you can spend ages fixing it in camp only to find it's broken in the other. Fix it there and find it's broken again, back where you started.