Is there a map/table that instructs how to change text and side&center box coloring

Is there a table that maps specified changes in text and side/center box characteristics to the required changes in CSS and/or source code?

Sorry, I don't understand the question. What exactly are you trying to do ?

If you want to change the appearance or styling of an element, use Firefox's Firebug extension, or similar developer tools in other browsers. Firebug will tell you exactly what style rules apply to any given element, and let you temporarily edit them and see the result immediately.

If you want to change some output text on your site, use the admin > Tools > Developers Toolkit, enter a distinctive bit of the text you want to change, select all files and search. Among the results will be the file and line number where the text is defined. You can then edit that file and save it to your template override folder.

There have been posts with listings of what various items in the stylesheet do, but I found them quite limited in usefulness and not worth the time to refer to.

There are several settings in admin > Configuration > Layout Settings and elsewhere for sidebar configuration, sizing, etc.

Understood. I've been using Firefox console, but the strange thing is it doesn't view below a certain level of "requires". Yes, then I use whatever level of code the console displays and select words to use in Zen Cart Developers Tool Kit to penetrate deeper. Thanks for the information on Firebug. I wasn't aware of its existence.

When all been said and done though, using CSS styles "opacity" and "z-index" I can't make my product images in the left sidebox completely opaque after I've set the container to transparent. I know there's a way to accomplish this because in my center sidebox I've successfully set the container to opaque and the product images are opaque by default. I've studied the difference between the php controlling the left and center sideboxes, but I can't find a difference in the code that would account for the difference in the displays. I've also searched for a way to control the order of the execution of sidebox container code with respect to sidebox image display, hoping to cause the latter to execute before the former, but only you guys who created the system can sort that out.

Thanks again for your prompt response.

Thanks for your prompt response stevesh. My response to gjh42 captures the state of this issue at the moment.