Theme development

I am using the blog system as a news and promotions tracker. Create the content and choose which category it belongs in. But the current out put of the recent blog entries block is like this

News And Promotions :
* Titile
* Title
* Title

What I want it to look like is this

News And Promotions :
* News : Title (Time Stamp)
* Deal : Title (Time Stamp)

Ordered by date, not catagory.

Is there a way for me to do this?

I'm working on this site: http://www.namaillo.com/port/ and I have a problem I can figure out.

On the left there is the sidebar. Now how would I get it to stretch fully from the top to the bottom seamlessly? This is the cell of the table:

  <tr>
    <td width="200" background="themes/namaillo/images/left.gif"><?php print $sidebar_left ?></td>
  </tr>

I'm assuming its not so simple. Do I have to edit something in the CSS?

I am using "red barron theme" to build a simple site. I have made some changed in color and margins. The theme have a navbar and a content. But there is an emty space to the right and to the left.

I whant to move the navbar out to the left and the content to fill the rest of tha page.

Do I have to change theam and start over or is it easely done?

Thanks in advance.

Carl-Fredrik

I am looking for a three column theme like SEO Position in layout to use on my blogging site but that has more block areas, preferably with 3 blocks at the bottom above the footer block and a header banner at the top above the logo.

I'm new to working with CSS but I've been able to figure out how to tweak fonts, backgrounds etc when it comes to tweaking themes. However, I don't yet know enough to be able to go in and code my own blocks areas. I would appreciate any help or advice on this.

Thanks in advance.

I've spent so many hours on this now so I have to ask you guys. To make it more easy for you I've put up images since I don't have a server yet. (Im using xampp)

What my site and code looks like:
http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=1okck4.jpg

The site looks OK but I want the $links to the right. ($links = Add new comment, Reads..)

I'm still having troubles with adding different background pictures to different nodes !
I've tried by adding a