Here is a fiddle I created: http://jsfiddle.net/ozzy/WEGMh/
This is how it is supposed to look:
The issue is that the left and right hand divs are not displaying. I have attempted to use z-index, but there must be something obvious that I am missing.
Perhaps my code is not great either...
The concept is to have a flexible container height with fixed width. The header has fixed width and height, the left div has fixed width and flexible height, and the right div should just adapt to the left div's parameters. The footer div has fixed width and height.
Hopefully that clarifies things.