I have a SP 2010 publishing site with a custom master page, using the Body Only page layout. I inserted a discussion board web part in the page content section of the page. When I go into the standard web part properties and try to set an absolute width (in pixels), the web part itself does not squeeze down to this size. Instead, the web part content stays the same size, and some other div involved gets the width applied and covers up the web part content (sounds confusing, see image below for example).
I tried this on a site with no master page and a web part zone, and it the web part content itself resized, which is what I was hoping to see above. Has anyone else seen this behavior? Does the web part need to be in an actual web part zone in order to resize? Or is this all just a problem with my custom master/styles? I suspect it may be the latter, but I'm not sure how much control I have to fix it. Anyway, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Image samples below to illustrate the issue.
IMAGE 1: See how "Last Updated" is cut off at the end? This was set to 600 pixels. The web part content doesn't resize.
IMAGE 2: This was set to 500 pixels in a traditional web part zone on a page with no custom master. The content resizes as expected.