How to let the height of a div grow automatically with the height ofanother div?

I am new to CSS and I posted this question to the
macromedia.dreamweaver newsgroup yesterday, but unfortunately no one
seems to have a clue. At least no one has responded. So, I am
posting it here and see if I will get any luck.

I have a left div, which contains the navigation menu items, and a
right div, which is the main content area.

I set a background image (repeat-y) for the left div through css's
background: url property.

Now, I want to let the left div grow automatically along with the
right div such that the background image won't stop half way down the
page.

I created a screen shot to illustrate this problem. See below.

http://gnewsgroup.googlepages.com/cssdivheight

Any good idea? Thank you.

On 2008-06-23, Author wrote:That's why they use Dreamweaver.
Post a URL so that we can see the code.

--
Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
================================================== =================
Author:
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)

In article <58348$486006cb$cef88ba3$25596@TEKSAVVY.COM>,
"Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohnson@gmail.comwrote:
The original poster's scenario (two columns with equal height)
is a very common one; maybe they're all waiting for someone else
to respond.
You can't do this easily with just the two divs (left and right).
You could wrap both in a containing div, and put the background
image on that with repeat-y and no horizontal (x) repeat.

If you (original poster) search for two-column equal height, you'll
probably find lots of other suggestions...

David Stone wrote:Or maybe they're tired of the same questions over and over again. I know
I am. This one comes up repeatedly. It's been answered repeatedly, too.

It boggles the mind how people can figure out how to post to a
newsgroup, but can't figure out how to search the group archives,
*especially* when they're posting through google groups. :-\

--
Berg

On Jun 23, 6:02 pm, Bergamot <berga...@visi.comwrote:Thank you very much for your hint. I did search around, but sometimes
if you don't know the key words to search, you'll have bad luck in
searching. For example, I am new to CSS, and I don't even know what
this concept is called. David Stone has nicely suggested search key
words which is absolutely helpful. Thanks a lot David.

Once my electric garbage disposal sink went bad, but at that time, I
did not know what this stuff is called. And I wanted to buy a part to
replace this thing. I wanted to do a google-search, but did not know
what key words to use, although I consider myself a good googler.

Let me search for two columns equal height and see what happens.

In article
<6ad56086-5c7f-463b-bf87-909f06775369@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
Author <gnewsgroup@gmail.comwrote:
You might get some ideas from:

<http://netweaver.com.au/floatHouse/page10.html>

--
dorayme