Auto resize of background image?

[Miggy]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some time ago, I started toying with the notion of getting my own website, with my own domain name instead of all the company.com/user/welcome.html stuff. When Road Runner shut down all the old website space late last year and required subscribers to sign up somewhere else, I saw that as a sign to go forward with it. I got one set up and am working on the main page.

Here's my question: I have a 1440X1028 picture that I have set up as the background. It looks great on my 24" monitor, but on most setups (such as the work laptop I'm using now) it goes off the screen, cutting off most of the picture. I could set it up to scroll, but I don't want to do that.

Is there any way in html to have it size to whatever screen it's being viewed on? I've tried searching for it, but haven't found anything conclusive. Most of the results I've found deal with auto-sizing pop-up windows.

BTW, obviously I'm not speaking about a background with tiled .gifs. I'm talking about a single large picture.

Thanks in advance for any assistance anyone can offer.

Miggy, the Penitent Thief

[Charles]

Well, a single large picture is going to really annoy people with dial up connections, and people using hand-helds. But if you must, your only real option is to use an image that feathers out to a constant color at the edges. Set that color as the background color.

[Major Payne]

Or see if this (http://www.cssplay.co.uk/layouts/background) would be useful to you.

[Miggy]

Major Payne,

Hey, thanks. That might be just what I need; I'll look at it later today when I have time.

As far as the people on dial-up, I'm not sure that will be so much of a problem with my intended audience. However, I was thinking of shrinking down the image a little bit, since it's larger than what most people's computer resolution is set at.

What do you think the average is? 1024X768?

Miggy, the Penitent Thief

[Major Payne]

Even at 1024X768 res, I still like to not make my page width more than 800px if I can help it. I have a 22-inch monitor, but I keep my browser (FF) window size to 1024X768 to maintain my perspective.

[Charles]

Bunny looks kind of cool on a 200x800 window.

If this isn't for the general public and you are aiming at a "target" group then we can't really say what the average of that group is going to be. And people tend to not have their browser windows open as wide as they go.

The bigger issue is going to be the hand-helds. There is a way to specify different styles for hand-helds but I've found it not very well supported. I've got these great alternate styles--simplified layout, easy on the images--but the hand-helds keep rendering using the screen stylesheet.