Theme coding questions

ok i’m using the theme jQ 3.1 by Devolux and i had a couple of coding questions. first when i edit the search bar out of the content in the 404 error page the background comes up to the text and leaves a hug space between there and the footer. is there anyway to take the search bar out with out it doing that? Also i want to edit out the search bar and the “made by” bubble out of the footer but when i do it the tag cloud goes above the archive. i want the tag cloud to be next to the archive bubble to the left.
This is the code for the 404 page with out any changes:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content">
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<div id="text">
<h2>Not found!</h2>
<?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?>
<!-- search template -->
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . "/searchform.php"); ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

To remove the search bar i take out this:

<!-- search template -->
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . "/searchform.php"); ?>

so that now the code looks like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<div id="content">
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<div id="text">
<h2>Not found!</h2>
<?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

To see what happens you’ll have to do that yourselves since i don’t know if i can post images.

This is what the code for the footer looks like before hand:

<!-- footer template -->
<div id="appendix" class="clearfix">
<div class="app_widget">
<!-- sidebar_bottom_left -->
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('sidebar_bottom_left') ) : ?>
<div class="widget">
<h4><a href="#" title="Toggle" class="hide_widget">Find it!</a></h4>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?>
</div>
<?php endif; // endif widget ?>
<p class="wp-bookmark"><a class="wp-logo" href="http://wordpress.org"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/img/wordpress-logo.png" alt="WordPress"/></a></p>
<div id="credits">Theme Design by <a href="http://devolux.nh2.me"><strong>devolux.nh2.me</strong></a></div>
</div>
<div class="app_widget">
<!-- sidebar_bottom_middle -->
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('sidebar_bottom_middle') ) : ?>
<div id="tag_cloud" class="widget">
<h4><a href="#" title="Toggle" class="hide_widget">Tag Cloud</a></h4>
<div><?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?></div>
</div>
<?php endif; // endif widget ?>
</div>
<div class="app_widget">
<!-- sidebar_bottom_right -->
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('sidebar_bottom_right') ) : ?>
<div  id="archives" class="widget">
<h4><a href="#" title="Toggle" class="hide_widget">Archives</a></h4>
<ul><?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly&limit=12'); ?></ul>
</div>
<?php endif; // endif widget ?><a id="totop" href="#">To top</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- wp_footer -->
<?php wp_footer(); ?>
</body>
</html>

at the moment i take out these to remove the things i want to:

<p class="wp-bookmark"><a class="wp-logo" href="http://wordpress.org"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/img/wordpress-logo.png" alt="WordPress"/></a></p>
<div id="credits">Theme Design by <a href="http://devolux.nh2.me"><strong>devolux.nh2.me</strong></a></div>
</div>

but then as i said before the tag cloud goes above the archive bubble but i want them to be next to eachother. any ideas? thanks for the help.