Hi, I've been trying to recreate an effect from this tutorial: http://jqueryfordesigners.com/jquery-look-tim-van-damme/

Unfortunately, I want a background image underneath and because of the resize going on in JavaScript, it gets resized and cut off as well, like so: http://dev.gentlecode.net/dotme/index-sample.html - you can view source there to check the HTML, but basic structure looks like this:

<div class="page">
     <div class="container">
         div.header
         ul.nav
         div.main     
     </div> 
</div> 

Here is my jQuery code:

$('ul.nav').each(function() {
    var $links = $(this).find('a'),
        panelIds = $links.map(function() { return this.hash; }).get().join(","),
        $panels = $(panelIds),
        $panelWrapper = $panels.filter(':first').parent(),
        delay = 500;

    $panels.hide();

    $links.click(function() {
        var $link = $(this),
            link = (this);

        if ($link.is('.current')) {
            return;
        }

        $links.removeClass('current');
        $link.addClass('current');

        $panels.animate({ opacity : 0 }, delay);
        $panelWrapper.animate({
            height: 0
        }, delay, function() {
            var height = $panels.hide().filter(link.hash).show().css('opacity', 1).outerHeight();

            $panelWrapper.animate({
                height: height
            }, delay);
        }); 
    });

    var showtab = window.location.hash ? '[hash=' + window.location.hash + ']' : ':first';

    $links.filter(showtab).click();

});

In this example, panelWrapper is a div.main and it gets resized to fit the content of tabs. The background is applied to the div.page but because its child is getting resized, it resizes as well, cutting off the background image.

It's hard to explain so please look at the link above to see what I mean.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is: is there a way to resize an element without resizing its parent? I tried setting height and min-height of .page to 100% and 101% but that didn't work. I tried making the background image fixed, but nada. It also happens if I add the background to the body or even html. Help?