Get background to extend full area of TD?

[gorilla1]

I have an area on a page where I am putting text and I want a background behind it and I would like the background to stretch and cover as much of the area as possible. This page will also repeat numerous times (it is a slideshow template page), with the amount of text differing each time. The way I have it coded below, if the text is only one sentence, very little of the background image appears. There is also a line of text that I would not mind putting at the bottom of that TD, if I could make it fall in the same place in each page. I also would not mind if the slideshow controls (forward/backward/play arrows) showed up at the same place on each page. But I am a bit lost about how to accomplish all this. By the way, the reason I don't put the background image over the whole table from the top is that if I do that, then NS4 does not accept the background colors on all the nested tables below. There is probably some straightforward approach to resolve this that I am missing. Can anyone spot it?

G


<TABLE class="intab" width="220" height="530" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="left" border="0">


<tr valign="top">

<td COLSPAN=3>

<TABLE width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" valign="top" border="0" bgcolor="003300">

<tr>
<td class="trailmens1" align="left"><A href="#" onClick="return jump('index.html')"">HOME</A></TD>
<td class="trailmens1" align="right"><A href="#" OnClick="return windowclose();"">CLOSE WINDOW</A></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</TD>
</TR>
<tr valign="top">
<TD width="220" align=center valign="top" border=0>
<P class="corp">title type stuff goes here</P></td></tr>
<tr valign=middle>

<TD width="220" align=center valign="middle" border=0 style="background-image:url('bgplantx4.jpg'); background-repeat: no-repeat">

<P class="textw">The variable length text I am talking about will go in this area...........</P><BR><BR>


</TD>
</TR>
<TR valign=bottom ><td align=center>
<img src="db/slideshw.gif" width=135 height=15>
<!-******slideshow controls****->
<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0 bgcolor="#003300" width=135 height=25>
<tr>
<td align=center valign=middle width=135 height=15><a href="nurs06.html" onMouseOver="'backarrow" onMouseOut="nobackarrow'"...... src="db/back_off.gif" width=40 height=25 border=0></a>...etc...</td></tr></table>

<!-- ****end controls******l-->



</TD>
</TR>

</TD>
</TR>
<tr><td><IMG src="1pix.gif" width=135 height=15 alt="" BORDER=0></td></tr>
</TABLE>

</TABLE>



</td>
</tr>
</table>

[Morgoth]

I am a little confused still, but you said:
the reason I don't put the background image over the whole table from the top is that if I do that, then NS4 does not accept the background colors on all the nested tables below.


So I think (if this does solve your problem, cause I am still a little unsure what that problem is) you could make the other (green) background be in a new table... so have more then just your... 3 tables.

make 2 new tables to be 100% width and 100% height and their BGcolor can be the green.


does this help?