Stretching Sidebar Issue

[rgraves]

Hi,

I'm trying to convert our site to a CSS driven layout. The major problem I'm running into is that I can't get the purple sidebar on the right to stretch to the full height of the content area.

Here is an example of what I have so far:
http://www.lib.uwo.ca/css

Can someone take a look at this and figure out what it is I'm doing wrong? I have some code on line 82 of the style sheet that allows it to work as is in IE6/7 on a PC but I am having trouble in every other browser I've tested (Opera 8, FF, Netscape 7 on a PC, IE5.2, Safari, FF on a MAC).

There are a few other minor CSS issues but it is this one that I am stumped on.

Your help is MUCH appreciated!
Rob

[ronaldb66]

One of the more popular approaches is to not attempt to make the sidebar stretch the desired hight, but to fake the effect using a suitable background graphic on the wrapper div.

Dan Cederholm describes it in detail in his Faux Columns (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/) article; since your layout features only two columns and has a fixed width, this would work a charm.

[rgraves]

Thanks.

I took a look at the faux columns page and also at this Negative Margins article (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/negativemargins) which related more closely to what I was doing.

The Negative Margins article appears to have solved my problem... although I still need to get access to a mac to test everything.

God Bless alistapart.com! :-)