I've been looking around for some css that lets me make a two column layout. I'm an amature designer, and the problem I'm finding is that the columns are never the same height... I can make columns, but the left one needs to be the same height as the right one when content changes. (there is a bg image on both columns) I may be overlooking something very simple...

One method to achieve this is called "faux columns" - several techniques are listed here:
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=AnyColumnLongest

ok after following LadynRed link (super useful!) I would suggest, you use a container DIV for both (or more) columns or DIV's and set their height to a large number, then add the OVERFLOW:HIDDEN to your container.

Ahhh.. but you need to be careful with that because Opera has some bugs associated with that.

You really don't need to do that anyway. If you want your columns to appear the same length no matter how much content, then the columns only need to be as long as the content anyway.

if your columns are as long as your content how can you make sure they are the same height if the content is different from one column to another?

That is why the 'faux columns' method works so well. The actual content of the columns may NOT be the same, but the fake columnar background makes it LOOK like they are equal.

Outside of newspapers and magazines, it's rare you see totally equal-length columns of content.

I'm not sure if this is the same as the faux columns method, but what I've been doing is to wrap both columns in a container column and set the background of the container column to match the background of whichever column is shorter. And that assumes the shorter column is always the shorter column on every page.

Might not work for all cases, but it's worked for what I've needed to this point.

Im just happy with the overflown hidden, I think with clip:rect you can solve the Opera issue, I havent tried though I dont need to do columns exact same height right now but you may wanna try