Originally posted by Jona
The ALA article you're talking about is called, "Faux Columns (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fauxcolumns/)."
Actually that's wrong. The link you posted is about making a second column appear to be the same length as a longer one that's right next to it.
Ryan's site isn't doing this because the white background can be defined throughout a container <div>. Not saying that's how he did it because I'm not looking at the code right now. I'm just using the idea.
Anyway, what I think they are talking about is the border that's on the ousite of the container <div> area. Basically what the person does is defines a container to be something like 750px wide and then they create a background image that wide, but fairly small height wise. They then repeat the image vertically to give it the left and right sides. Add a bacground image in the header and footer and it gives a feel for the whole container type area.
Sorry if this sounds jumbled. If I had more time I would explain it better. Just go right click on the image that's a "border" on the sides and click on "View background image" to start to see what I'm talking about.