ATA 3.7.8
WP 3.4.2

I've tried almost a dozen different ways to space these footer widgets out (space between widgets and outer widget borders lining up with edges of my layout) through Fbug and various code copied from the forums, but they won't budge.

EDIT: CUT PREVIOUS CODE - No longer relevant to thread, solution below.

I am certainly a hack, but assume it is a selector of some sort I do not have right? Spacing, widget text inheriting footer font color, container height are the main things I want to adjust.

Thanks for any point in the right direction!

If you want all three areas to be the same size you could put (as an example) 20px padding on the right side of the left area, 10px right and left padding on the center area and 20px padding on the left side of the right area. This would give you 30px spacing between areas.

Thank you, that is exactly what I am trying to do.

But, when I try to put padding values in a single line of code, nothing moves for me. I think it is my selector?

For instance, I am trying to figure out the prefix and the <something> to get the desired result.

div#<something> {padding-left:20px;}
.<something> {padding-left:20px;}
#<something> {padding-left:20px;}

I see some strange code on your site. But looking at what you want to do I might choose to put a one celled widget area in that spot and then use a table in a text widget or perhaps a column plugin to create the three areas. Bottom line this would require a bit of time to work out but hopefully that gives you a direction.

Thanks for checking it out. I will try a different approach. When you say "strange", is that serious, like malware or a plug in adding slashes where they shouldn't be? or is it more strange like a guy has cobbled together a site compiled from random problem solving bits (or worse heh)?

try this in CSS Inserts

td#footer {
padding:0px
}

#footer_1 div.footer-widget {margin-right: 10px;}
#footer_2 div.footer-widget {margin-right: 5px; margin-left: 5px;}
#footer_3 div.footer-widget {margin-left: 10px;}

and if it doesn't work, disable ALL your plugins - something is generating a backslash (\) before a double quote (") in the footer and I expect is is one of your plugins.