CSS 2 colume question?

Question

i have a two colume page layout set up. My colume on the left has a blue background. How do I get the colume on the left to extend down as long as the page is. Right now the blue background for the left colume only extends as far as the text goes. I want the blue to be as long/tall as the page and I also want it to start at the top of the page right now there is a little gap between the top of my webpage and the start of my blue colume. Below is the code I have in my CSS style sheet
#menu {
position: absolute;
left: 0px;
padding: 0px;
width: 150px;
background: lightsteelblue;
text-align:left;
}

Answer 1

is the column is table? if table give the table background as lightsteelblue. But column... give the html page background blue which your accessing in that column. For positoin add top:0px also.

Answer 2

yeah, in css its only affected by how much "text" or content is there.

what you can do is nest your layers in each other

do a layout div that defines the area of your page, and add a background that has the "columns" defined.

then create your two columsn ithin that layout

example

http://www.geocities.com/arus.geo/csstest.html

Your CSS would look something like this:

#layout
{
width: 760px;
margin: 10px auto;
color: #333;
line-height: 130%;
background-image: url(bgcolumn.jpg);
}

#side
{
float: left;
width: 145px;
margin: 0;
padding-right: 2px;
padding-left: 2px;
}

#main
{
margin-left: 160px;
}