Member Avatar for Jaklins

Hello

This is probably a stupid question, but I've been viewing page sources and I can't figure it out.

I want to make a website that has a color background and place the content on top of a white background which is on top of the color background. Then I want that content to stay within the borders of the white background no matter what the screen resolution is.
Like the website screwattack.com

I'm sure there's a tutorial on that somewhere, but I can't find it since I don't even know what that concept is called.

Any help appreciated.

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Member Avatar for Vampola

You just need to set background picture in body like they did ( repeat-y dimensions:1400px x 1px) and then set a wrapper div 940 width for all your content with 10 px padding. Also make sure to set both padding and margin to 0 in your body tag.

Member Avatar for Jaklins

Thanks for the suggestions guys, but I need more help.

MagicMedia, I've done some php but I really suck at css- never had to deal with layout. The link you gave made me more confused if anything and I don't know how to use half the stuff on that site.

Vampola, you were more straightforward and I liked that. By "they", you must mean www.screwattack.com that i referred to. I copied the opening body tag from the page source and I got the blue background, which is actually only a stretched horizontal line, but I didn't mess with the values. I don't know where you got 1400 and 940 from because I can't find those values in the source code, and besides those are fixed values- if someone had a lower screen resolution, they'd need to do a lot of scrolling. Now, I just noticed that 1400 is the backgrounds width, but that can be replaced with "100%". Fixed values are no good because the viewer with low screen resolution should see the site in full width, and a viewer with high screen resolution should see it with margins. The margins aren't supposed to be there if someone has a low screen resolution.

Can someone give me an example of the code I need?

Member Avatar for Vampola

Hmmm....Maybe this will help you:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

<body>

<div class="container">
  <div class="header"><a href="#"><img src="" alt="Insert Logo Here" name="Insert_logo" width="180" height="90" id="Insert_logo" style="background: #C6D580; display:block;" /></a> 
    <!-- end .header --></div>
  <div class="content">
    <h1>Instructions</h1>
    <p>Be aware that the CSS for these layouts is heavily commented. If you do most of your work in Design view, have a peek at the code to get tips on working with the CSS for the fixed layouts. You can remove these comments before you launch your site. </p>
    <h2>Layout</h2>
    <p>Since this is a one-column layout, the .content is not floated. </p>
    <h3>Logo Replacement</h3>
    <p>An image placeholder was used in this layout in the .header where you'll likely want to place  a logo. It is recommended that you remove the placeholder and replace it with your own linked logo. </p>
    <p> Be aware that if you use the Property inspector to navigate to your logo image using the SRC field (instead of removing and replacing the placeholder), you should remove the inline background and display properties. These inline styles are only used to make the logo placeholder show up in browsers for demonstration purposes. </p>
    <p>To remove the inline styles, make sure your CSS Styles panel is set to Current. Select the image, and in the Properties pane of the CSS Styles panel, right click and delete the display and background properties. (Of course, you can always go directly into the code and delete the inline styles from the image or placeholder there.)</p>
    <!-- end .content --></div>
  <div class="footer">
    <p>Footer</p>
    <!-- end .footer --></div>
  <!-- end .container --></div>
</body>
</html>

and put the style in separate file style.css

@charset "utf-8";
body {
	font: 100%/1.4 Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	background: #42413C;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	color: #000;
}

/* ~~ Element/tag selectors ~~ */
ul, ol, dl { /* Due to variations between browsers, it's best practices to zero padding and margin on lists. For consistency, you can either specify the amounts you want here, or on the list items (LI, DT, DD) they contain. Remember that what you do here will cascade to the .nav list unless you write a more specific selector. */
	padding: 0;
	margin: 0;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p {
	margin-top: 0;	 /* removing the top margin gets around an issue where margins can escape from their containing div. The remaining bottom margin will hold it away from any elements that follow. */
	padding-right: 15px;
	padding-left: 15px; /* adding the padding to the sides of the elements within the divs, instead of the divs themselves, gets rid of any box model math. A nested div with side padding can also be used as an alternate method. */
}
a img { /* this selector removes the default blue border displayed in some browsers around an image when it is surrounded by a link */
	border: none;
}
/* ~~ Styling for your site's links must remain in this order - including the group of selectors that create the hover effect. ~~ */
a:link {
	color: #42413C;
	text-decoration: underline; /* unless you style your links to look extremely unique, it's best to provide underlines for quick visual identification */
}
a:visited {
	color: #6E6C64;
	text-decoration: underline;
}
a:hover, a:active, a:focus { /* this group of selectors will give a keyboard navigator the same hover experience as the person using a mouse. */
	text-decoration: none;
}

/* ~~ this fixed width container surrounds the other divs ~~ */
.container {
	width: 960px;
	background: #FFF;
	margin: 0 auto; /* the auto value on the sides, coupled with the width, centers the layout */
}

/* ~~ the header is not given a width. It will extend the full width of your layout. It contains an image placeholder that should be replaced with your own linked logo ~~ */
.header {
	background: #ADB96E;
}

/* ~~ This is the layout information. ~~ 

1) Padding is only placed on the top and/or bottom of the div. The elements within this div have padding on their sides. This saves you from any "box model math". Keep in mind, if you add any side padding or border to the div itself, it will be added to the width you define to create the *total* width. You may also choose to remove the padding on the element in the div and place a second div within it with no width and the padding necessary for your design.

*/

.content {

	padding: 10px 0;
}

/* ~~ The footer ~~ */
.footer {
	padding: 10px 0;
	background: #CCC49F;
}

/* ~~ miscellaneous float/clear classes ~~ */
.fltrt {  /* this class can be used to float an element right in your page. The floated element must precede the element it should be next to on the page. */
	float: right;
	margin-left: 8px;
}
.fltlft { /* this class can be used to float an element left in your page. The floated element must precede the element it should be next to on the page. */
	float: left;
	margin-right: 8px;
}
.clearfloat { /* this class can be placed on a <br /> or empty div as the final element following the last floated div (within the #container) if the #footer is removed or taken out of the #container */
	clear:both;
	height:0;
	font-size: 1px;
	line-height: 0px;
}
commented: Exactly the answer i was looking for. +1
Member Avatar for Jaklins

THANK YOU! Exactly what i needed. Really, thanks for taking the time.

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