[clug-progsig] HTML/CSS help?

[Shawn]

Hi gang.

I'm working on a web page layout that is a little complex, and need some help.

If you look at the current www.open2space.com site (which is my site), you'll 
see header, menu, content, advertising (right hand column), and footer 
sections.  This is done using CSS and the menu, content, and advertising 
sections expand vertically to match the content being displayed.  I'm trying 
to emulate this layout with a slight twist, and the twist is stumping me.

The twist is that I want to add another row before the footer section, and 
have this section ALSO expand to match the content.  The Content would start 
at the top of the content area, and flow into this new row, but not the 
footer.  The content section would not grow vertically, but the new row 
would.

hmmm.  that doesn't sound too clear...  Maybe this will help. 
Take a look at http://www.open2space.com/new/images/mars_template.jpg.
(btw, I created the image in Gimp, so am able to modify/slice it if needed.)
The idea is to have my web content appear in the white area.  But notice how 
the image fades into the white area?  I want to keep this intact, but when I 
have long content, expand the white space but not the planet image, AND keep 
the silver borders intact.  If the content area were white only, then I can 
use the same method I did on my current web site.  But I really like the fade 
effect.

One option I thought of was to put a scrolling DIV in the content area, but I 
don't think that's the best solution.  I'll keep messing with the code, but 
am open to suggestions on how to solve this.  If/when I do, I can post the 
code here for anyone interested....

Thanks for any tips.

Shawn