Slider problem (too wide?)

Hi again –

I have two questions re: the built-in slider:

1. The Mesocolumn theme works well on a desktop/laptop without a slider. But adding a slider creates formatting problems with the blog posts below — there is less separation between the columns and not everything displays correctly as a result. (The problem is the same with different browsers and with various widths. This problem occurs whether or not the “responsiveness” feature is on or off.)

As far as I can tell, the problem is that the slider is too wide, which ends up affecting the blog posts below it. Accordingly, I presume that the solution would be to reduce the relative width of the slider so that it does not interfere with the blog posts below it. Is there backend code that could be used to reduce the slider width or is there some other way to fix this?

2. My blog posts do not include any images at all. Is it possible to add a default image to the slider? (I just want to use a background color for the slider – if necessary, the color can be the same for every post. I do not want to add images to the individual blog posts.)

Thanks in advance.