Look Here

My Site

Notice in the first link that there is a white 'background' colour over the background pattern which is a stripey design. I want to be able to do this on my website, but at the moment i am just using a background image i designed myself so it would give a light blue background with a design at the sides (it is all an image - view background picture to understand). This does make it look like the first link, but it does not work properly when changing resolutions - so i need to know how to do the same as the first link...this might be a bit confusing.

This is not all that hard to do. I have done that effect on these 3 sites:

Primary Health Group - Johnston Willis
http://www.southerkentuckyurology.com
http://www.lewis-galephyisicians.com

The patterned backgound goes into the container <div>
The white "box" on top is another <div> with the background color set to white.

I actually use 3 on some sites to get the long horizontal bar in.

body {
     margin:  0;
     padding:  0;
     background-color:  #000000;  /* replace with a background colour or background of your choice */
     color:  #000000;
}
div#content-area {
     margin:  10px auto; /* the 10px provides a top and bottom margin; auto centers the div  */
     width:  760px;  /* replace with your div width. */
     text-align:  center;  /* needed for older IE versions. */
}
div#content-area * {
     text-align:  left;  /* counteracts the IE older versions text-align above. */
}

There's your CSS. The body should be good from there.

Example site: Lighten Up 2006: This year, let's use less electricity!

Is this done using frames?

No frames, no tables.. it's all CSS.