I want to alter the width of the text area

Hi Guys

Yet another newbie, great forum. Have been finding a lot of problems i have run into on my own usually just by googling it, but it is time to ask for your help. A simple problem but i have tried everything but no joy. I want to alter the width of the text area (not page width). I did it once while potching about ages ago but cant do it now. I tried altering:
TEXTAREA {
float: left;
margin: auto;
display: block;
width:80%;
}
as you can see to 80% which is what i want in the CSS but no joy. Not sure if i have altered something else by accident that overrides this. I have only the left column showing and text does take the rest of the page up but cant change width, help please!!

Do you by chance have your right column set to display in the admin of your cart even though you are not using it ? Look at configuration/layout settings.

If you don't use right column and you haven't turned it off using that global setting, it has been my experience that you get really wonky results when working with the content area.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for quick response, I checked and the right column was set to 'on' globally so i turned it off but nothing happened.

Do you have a URL I can see - so that I may better help you ?

Still setting up site and I know I have lots of questions to ask in next few days, site url:
http://www.edenspirit.co.uk/index.php

Thanks for help..

But it appears that the text area on the content page is displaying correctly to me - it is stretching all the way across....

So does everything on your create account page.

Are you saying that you want the whole content area to be 80% of the page?

Yes, I have entered different % values in to see if it alters but no cigar.. I want it be 80% of the text area, it looks like it is pretty much 100% or 95% or there abouts at moment. Any ideas??

Have you tried editing the wrappers ? Those define the seperate widths of the header and the content as compare to the mainWrapper which will control the overall width of the template.

Not sure which wrapper you are talking about. Is it one of these (using version 1.3.0 by the way):

#headerWrapper, #contentMainWrapper, #logoWrapper, #cartBoxListWrapper, #ezPageBoxList, #cartBoxListWrapper ul, #ezPageBoxList ul, #mainWrapper, #popupAdditionalImage, #popupImage {

margin: 0em;
padding: 0em;
}

#navColumnOneWrapper, #navColumnTwoWrapper, #mainWrapper {
margin: auto;

} 

Do I add something here, is this where you meant? i am not sure where to go from here, could i have altered a different file somewhere which is stopping the css from working, could you go into a bit more detail about what you mean please.

Thanks for your help..

Actually the one you are wanting is the .centerColumn sorry - the wrapper is gonna such everything in on the page.

.centerColumn is just the content area - you can safely add padding to that define in order to bump in that area a little ;)

Hope that helps

Bingo!! job done. I added width to this text:
.centerColumn, #bannerOne, #bannerTwo, #bannerThree, #bannerFour, #bannerFive, #bannerSix {
padding: 3.8em;
width:88%; (this was added, for anyones else whos reading)
}

And it works, thanks your a star..

Is this what you are supposed to alter at the start or is it TEXTAREA bit of code in CSS but for some reason it didnt want to work or i did something?

Either way it works and while i got your attention there are going to be plenty of questions from me soon enough i am sure but i got a quick one.

When i add a category then add a bit of text and an image say, this displays fine but when i add a product and click on that category the text is not visible but the product is. How do i display text about category and then products after/below text? Thought id ask you while i was writing this.

Thanks

Paul