I am coding my first site and have used the code in the sticky here to center the site which has a width of 960px.

 

The problem is that when I assign a background colour to an element, it only spans across that 960 width, whereas I want it to span across the entire browser window. I tried using a width: 100% tag but it still only spans across the 960 width. Is there anyway to make it span to the browser edges?

body {
background:#000000;
}

 

OR - It can't hurt to put a blank wrap around your entire site either, like this:

<div id="wrap">

<div id="centered_box">width 960</div>

</div>

 

#wrap {
background:#000000;
}

#centered_box {
margin:auto:
width:960px;
background:#ffffff;
}

I think what you want to do is set the body (entire browser window?) to a colour, then set the colour of your wrapper.

 

The example below (using the faq code) gives a red body and blue wrapper - obviously you change colours to suit your design

 

body {
text-align:center;
background-color: #FF0000;
}
#wrapper {
margin: 0 auto;
width: xxxx; /* Replace the xxxx with the the width of your site (eg 800px)*/
text-align:left;
background-color: #0000FF;
}