Being retired and have a lot of time to teach myself Joomla and J51 template websites for friends, I was reading many forum threads. One of them referenced the Madison template and how he wanted to duplicate a feature.

So I checked out the demo and I liked the look with the main image/s (slideshow) taking up most of the "page" overlapping the Header/Menu area and also module Top1a overlapping the main image. So I have Kinvara and wondered if I could duplicate that look.

Here is what I found: I'm using the j51_layerslideshow module for my slideshow, my images are 1190x490. I see that Madison's images are 1800x1200, which might make a better look. I went to the template edit style > module style override and for Position Showcase- 1A I made the Padding and Margin -250 each and the position Top-1a's Padding and Margin -50 each.

This more or less duplicated the look of Madison. I do not know if this will work on all of the templates, but it works with Kinvara. Ciarán might correct me if there is an easier way to do this.

Update: I thought to check it out on a cellphone and a tablet. If those are important, it doesn't work well. Although, I have a flexgallery under the showcase and with the "normal" setup, that doesn't show up on the phone.but it does on a tablet. I haven't worried about Mobile/tablet as I'm still making it work on a desktop. I'm thinking that there are also adjustment to make everything work on mobile/tablet.