Need help with background image

[mplssign]

I apologize - I don't know anything about CSS.

Here's what I have for the mainWrapper:

#mainWrapper {padding:0 61px 0 58px;}

What do I need to change this to?

here's how it looks now:
http://www.sewdarnedcute.com/index.php

Thanks for all your patience with my on this!

[kobra]

I believe you can remove the padding and just add a width: 950px; or somewhere around that value

[mplssign]

so here's what I put for line 46:
#mainWrapper {width:950px 61px 0 58px; color:#ffffff}

doesn't seem to be doing anything though. any ideas?

[rstevenson]

#mainWrapper {width:950px 61px 0 58px;

You've got things confused.

Imagine a box. Padding is what keeps things away from the inside of the box, just like packing something in a real box where you add padding to prevent the object from moving around inside the box.

Width is the size of your box from side to side. (You don't specify height, usually, in CSS. The height adjusts to fit whatever is in the box automatically.)

So specifiy your width in a line separate from your padding, like so...

#mainWrapper {
width: 950px;
padding: 0 61px 0 58px;
}

Margin (to make the lesson complete) is the space outside the box between it and any other objects. Margin is often used in CSS to push things over or down where you want them.

And to be clear: everything in CSS is inside a box, whether that box has a visible border or it's just implied. So you can do these things -- set width, apply margin or padding -- to pretty much anything on the page.

HTH

Rob

[mplssign]

Thanks for your clear explaination. I really appreciate it.
I'm still a bit confused on how to acheive the specific look I'm after.

I would like 1 single white rectangle to be centered (and move when the browser window expands and contracts with everything else).
This rectangle would be behind everything except the striped background.

Here's how I need it to look:
http://tholmesonline.com/HOME.jpg



The main wrapper seems to only to affect the images on top of the rectangle.

Underneeath the mainWrapper, there's "main_w" which seems to get me on the right track but this affects the nav bar which I want contained in the white rectangle.

I would like everything contained in the white rectangle. Does this make sense?

Sorry for my lack of basic CSS and HTML knowledge but I really am trying.

thanks again.

~Tony

[rstevenson]

Accckkkk! Sorry. I can't afford the time to figure out what Template Monster has done. I took a quick look using the Web developer tools and see that they've removed the usual wrapper, which you could have styled easily.

Only TM can help you at this point.

Rob

[mplssign]

what about a work around. Could I just make the stripes and the white rectangle one single background image?

And then everything else on top of it?