rick

I've been wanting to use a template like this one on my website.

My Template

I'm just using XHTML and CSS, mainly.

The problem is I only know how to set the sidebars to either a pre-set height or let them expand with the content. When the content in the middle extends past the side bars it looks funny and vice versa.

My question is...am I stuck setting the page to a certain height or is there a way to make everything expand with the longest div?

Someone let me know if this post does not belong here. Thank you.

jumpenjuhosaphat

The only way I can think to do it is to set a container div that will contain all three divs(the side bars and the content), and set a background image that is 1px in height that repeats. The background image would be a slice of what your 3 divs together are. In other words, an image that has 100px of grey, 400px of white, and another 100px of grey.

If your content is the only thing that will be dynamic, if your side bars will always have the same amount of content, you could just set a container div with a background color of grey, and then put the content div in with a background of white, but then you might get an issue if your content doesn't reach the bottom of the div.

Something I have done is just use percentages in the heights of all three that will expand to below the bottom of the content. The problem with this is you either have to make the page extremely long, or have the possibility that your content could still extend beyond the bottom of your other divs.

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rick

Thank you jumpen.

I tried using 100% on all but the sidebars still only extend past the content within them. Yes, a repeating would work as long as content length is about the same on all pages. I've been paying more attention to some other websites, and many of them just let the main content extend past the sidebars, buttons, adverts., etc. This would, probably, be the easiest for me.

Oh well, guess I can't have my cake and eat it too.

Does anyone know a good website where I can learn to put nav menu, footer, etc. in seperate file with php?

Thanks again.