100% width homepage

Hello,

I am designing a minimal portfolio site similar in structure to http://www.carriedils.com/

I have a few home page widgets including the slider, two middle widgets, and one bottom widget.

I would like the width of those to be 100% like is on the homepage of that link, but would like a 960px; width for my blog page, portfolio page, and other pages.

How can I do that with just the homepage?

Also, on my homepage, I am wanting to have a topnav like on the Freelance theme, though would like to have the search bar up there. What PHP code should I use? I tried <?php get_search_form( $echo ); ?> via http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_search_form but it did not work.

I did try a few other codes that did work, so I know that I have the functions.php correct.

Thanks much!