CSS - All Day Googling...almost There, Can Someone Assist With These Bits Please?

Hi guys,

Nearly ditched tables for good! Just got the last bits too do. Only problem is the length of the sidebars, can anyone explain how to make them go all the way down to the footer bar all the time? The right hand bar now goes down but only because it is full of line breaks, and as a perfectionist, i would like to ditch this and use CSS!!!

Also, it goes all topsey-turvey in firefox, so if someone could explain why so I can fix it?

CSS below, output of whole site is at http://www.generating-sets.com/index.new.php

Note that the links on there currently revert back to the old style until the layout is fixed i can't make it fully live.

its been fun trying to get it to all work with CSS, its looks better than tables too!


PHP Code:
 h1 {font-size: 1.4em;
font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: left;}

h2 {font-size: 1.3em;
font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: left;}

h3 {font-size: 1.2em;
font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: left;}

h4 {font-size: 1.1em;
font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: left;}

h5 {font-size: 1em;
font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: left;}

a:link {color: #ffffff;
text-decoration: none;}

a:visited {
    color: #ffffff;
    text-decoration: none;}    

a:hover {color: #dedbcb;
text-decoration: underline;}

a:hover {color: #dedbcb;
text-decoration: underline;}

body {margin: 0;
padding: 0;
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: .7em;
line-height: 1.4em}

div#header {padding: 2%;
text-align: center;
background-color: #0e2e3b;
color: #ffffff;
margin-bottom: 2px;
border-bottom: solid #ffffff 1px}

div#navbar {padding: 0%;
text-align: center;
background-color: #0e2e3b;
color: #ffffff;
margin-bottom: 0px;
border-bottom: solid #ffffff 1px}

div#newsbar {padding: 1%;
text-align: center;
background-color: #0e2e3b;
color: #ffffff;
margin-bottom: 0px;
border: 2px #ffffff solid;
position: relative;
left: +0px;
bottom: +3px;
right: -3px;
max-height: 160px;
width: 100%;}

div#footer {padding: 0%;
text-align: center;
color: #ffffff;
clear: both;
background-color: #0e2e3b;
border-top: solid #ffffff 1px}

div#maincontent {padding: 2%;
text-align: justify;
margin-left:  150px;
background-color: #0e2e3b;
color: #ffffff;
margin-bottom: 2px;
border-right: solid #ffffff 1px;
border-left: solid #ffffff 1px}

div#leftcolumn {padding: 2%;
float: left;
text-align: right;
background-color: #0e2e3b;
color: #ffffff;
width: 150px;
height: auto;
}

div#rightcolumn {padding: 2%;
float: right;
text-align: right;
background-color: #0e2e3b;
color: #ffffff;
width: 10px;
bottom: -1em;
top: +1em;}