Adding Frames onto a Fixed Background Image

[G35Driver]

I have 3 tables or 3 different sections on my page. The header and the footer are both going to be occupied with images. The middle section of the page is going to be a 700 x 400 fixed image. In this middle section I wanted to implement a menu/navigation system. Basically have the nav menu on the left side with around 10-15 links and hwen you click on it, loads up the content to the right of it only in this middle section. Both the menu navigation AND content would come up on the fixed image however, its not a repeated background.

How is that possible to do so the image isn't loaded up everytime (image is quite large)? How can you load up frames on top of a fixed image without splitting up the image and is that not a wise thing to do?

Any suggestions? Proper way to use stylesheets on a FIXED image? Thanks!

[joncotes]

I don't think there's a way to place an image behind multiple frames without splitting the image into one half for the nav and the other half for the content.

Are you using something like this:

.bodybg {
background-image: url(images/bodybg.gif);
}

if not, try it, just to see if the browser will keep the image in the cache.

Also, if you're not already using a .gif, you might want to think about converting it to a .gif so the load time improves.