How do I stretch a background image to cover the entire HTML element?

I'm trying to get a background image of a HTML element (body, div, etc.) to stretch its entire width and height.

Not having much luck. Is it even possible or do I have to do it some other way besides it being a background image?

My current css is:

body {
    background-position: left top;
    background-image: url(_images/home.jpg);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I'm not keen on maintaining the CSS in Gabriel's suggestion so I'm changing the layout of the page instead. But that seems like the best answer so I'm marking it as such.


<style>
    { margin: 0; padding: 0; }

    html { 
        background: url('images/yourimage.jpg') no-repeat center center fixed; 
        -webkit-background-size: cover;
        -moz-background-size: cover;
        -o-background-size: cover;
        background-size: cover;
    }
</style>

Use the background-size property: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-background/#the-background-size


In short you can try this....

<div data-role="page" style="background:url('backgrnd.png'); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 100% 100%;" >

Where I have used few css and js...

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.css" />
<script src="js/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="js/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.js"></script>

And it is working fine for me.


Not sure that stretching a background image is possible. If you find that it's not possible, or not reliable in all of your target browsers, you could try using a stretched img tag with z-index set lower, and position set to absolute so that other content appears on top of it.

Let us know what you end up doing.

Edit: What I suggested is basically what's in gabriel's link. So try that :)


To expand on @PhiLho answer, you can center a very large image (or any size image) on a page with:

{ 
background-image: url(_images/home.jpg);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:center; 
}

Or you could use a smaller image with a background color that matches the background of the image (if it is a solid color). This may or may not suit your purposes.

{ 
background-color: green;
background-image: url(_images/home.jpg);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:center; 
}