Ok e-commerce site here, each sales item is to be some kind of div which each contain a title, picture, description, and buy button. These will be fixed pixel size divs.

I want the sidebars to be static number of pixels.

To accommodate 1980 screens down to 800 screens, each item div should stack neatly into rows according to how many will fit in a row between the sidebars. This would imply that they should be floating.
example: We have 3 abroad on a 1280 screen and 7 abroad on a 1980 screen, still between static pixel width sidebars.

So is this CSS overflow or CSS align properties I should be looking at here, to make a bunch of divs float and arrange neatly into rows according to how much space there is between the sidebars?
I think the wrapper they float inside of should be a div which is defined from 130px from the top, and its left border is 130px from the left, and it's right border is 100px from the right, and it's bottom border is it's bottom border.

If you are on a 1280 screen with only 3 sales items abroad then the site becomes more than twice as tall as when you have 7 items abroad on a 1980 screen.

The wrapper div will start under the header on the top, go between the sidebars on the left and right, and the bottom will have to become taller based on how wide the screen is. But there must be stuff under the bottom of this wrapper. What kind of div should the wrapper be, and how should I define it for this?

The item divs are my most challenging part, how do I make them float and arrange themselves into appropriate rows according to how much space there is between the sidebars?
What kind of divs should these be? What properties will allow them to float like this, combination of css overflow and css align settings ? What are these precise settings?
- with this settings info and which kind of div I have conquered 90% of my dilemma.

You might want to read this article:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/r...ve-web-design/

So CSS definining a div within a large wrapper div to float:left is what I've taken from this. Is there anything else involved here that I should be looking at? Will the inner div [sales item]'s overflow properties come into play here ?


I need any and all responses SO badly, have thousands in SEO after being on disability for 8 years and the site is hitting Google Top 3 in the next couple weeks for MANY searchphrases, once it does I need the site's e-commerce design to truly work, and I insist on hand developing this as an original e-commerce concept.


PS- In the future I would like the site's sales items' pic, description, and price to be a variable which can be modified using some kind of backend, would traditional CMS systems be easy to make fit this mold ?

If that's all you got from that article, then you have a lot more to learn about css layouts.
You might want to start with a framework:
http://layouts.ironmyers.com/customize/

or
http://www.subcide.com/articles/crea...-from-scratch/
http://www.denbagus.net/css-layout-tutorial-techniques/

I got what they mean conceptually too, and will be sure to integrate those design concepts. Was wondering if this below paragraph of advice is something you would care to add to, Lady? It seems almost perfect, but any additional fields/variables/code snippet suggestions I can get down for this are of SO much value.

::you create a wrapper div and set that div to have a % width (width:70%), and then put all of your sales item divs in there. The sales item div may have a class name like .salesItem, and it would have a width property that is fixed (width: 300px). Just apply a position:relative, and float:left, right or whatever and that should get you the desired effect. ::

And most of all thank you for all your help, Lady! I am going to spend much time working with both of those articles.