Noob shame

programming web dev
1

I suffer noob shame… as i fear this is one of those “duh-duh” questions. But here goes. I am powering through the learning curve of HTML and dreamweaver (born and raised on flash you see), and am runnning into the following problem: i dont know what i am doing. but more specifically i need to know how to acheive the following.

I need to create a page that expands vertically to accomodate the text that is pasted into it without needing to have the framing images/tables redrawn (i dont know if that is the terminology for it). Here is an example of what i am looking to do:

http://www.neilleblanc.ca/MediaRoom/index.html
and
http://www.neilleblanc.ca/AboutNeil/index.html

notice that both these pages are clearly made from the same template, but one page has seamlessly expanded to accomodate the content dropped into it. I assume this to be a simple thing. So why then when i try to duplicate the effect do i get

http://www.andrewblack.org/dummysite/ask.html
and
http://www.andrewblack.org/dummysite/index.htm

Notice the the bottom of the pages are not level. Even though i set it up in dreamweaver that they LOOK even?!?! What the heck?

so this leaves me with the question, how to setup the page so that the various elements (the blue nav section, and the white content section, and the beige lines) all automatically expand to fit the text content, AND end up lining up?

Hanging head in noob shame

2

Well you can use % to define the height of the object in the left:
<code>
<img src=“whatever.gif” height=“80%”>
</code>
the height=“80%” tells it to occupy 80% of the space available
but the problem is that it just stretches the image!

3

Keep your header as is. Then use faux columns for the menu and content. Then have a footer (you don’t need to put anything in there as far as text goes if you don’t want to. You can just use it for the bottom of the box.

The faux column is the trick here - feel free to look it up if you want more info. But basically what you’ll do is place a div around the main content area and the menu. In that div you’ll repeat the background vertically. The background image will be the blue graident for the menu and the white background for the main text. You could include the borders if you’d like to.

Anyway the menu and main content area div will have a transparent background which will allow the background of the container div (parent) show. Now no matter which colum is longer you’ll get the background “columns” to end up the same height.

Then if you want use a footer div with an image (background) to make the bottom of the columns look like you want (close the bottom of the columns).