Hello everyone,
First let me warn you, I'm a guy with no real web site building experience - I'm trying to help a friend with a small web site he wants to build for a possible business. Therefore, my questions might frustrate you

I attached a zip file with an screenshot of the code, and the html file. The top blue art is a div, and the purple ribbon is a div as well. I had major problems with the second div, but I somehow managed to get it the way I wanted. I'm pretty sure an experienced web site builder will get a stroke when he sees the mess

Now I want to add shadows to the right and left borders of the big white box in the middle. To do that, I figured I need to place 2 divs (with a repeating y-axis image of the shadow). To put it rather simply, I'm having problems with this... and I would love to get some help on this....
I tried changing the absolute and relative settings, but once I do that, the entire page goes bananas.

I'd really appreciate your help on this, and the more "step by step" help - the better, because I will probably not understand a pro tech talk

Thank you!
Guy

Now I want to add shadows to the right and left borders of the big white box in the middle. To do that, I figured I need to place 2 divs (with a repeating y-axis image of the shadow).

No, you don't, you're making it more complicated than you need to. The easiest way to do this (other than CSS3 that is), is to create a narrow horizontal 'slice' of the white background that INCLUDES the shadows on the sides, then set that small graphic as the background of the main area, set it to repeat-y and you're done - box with shadows all at once.