long+short colums. Need backgound to fill w/ short.

The best way is to simply make the body background white, and then do not declare any background in #contents. Or, better yet,

#contents {
background: transparent;
}

Yeah. I guess I didn't make myself clear enough. What I hope to achieve is this: I need the #contents white all the way to the bottom when there is less content than the #leftnav, BUT I need the #leftnav that color all the way to the bottom when there is more content than the #leftnav. So I need either the #contents to fill all the way down to the bottom or the #leftnav. See, that is my problem.

Hi timoteo,
I think what procywolfy was suggesting is to set the background of the body white and only color the head and left column.
That way it will look as if the content column goes all the way down the page.

Hope that helps.

Right, I understand. But if I do that than how do I get the #leftnav background to fill all the way to the bottom when there is more content.

See: http://cellphonefind.com/cellular_phone_companies.html

The trick can be accomplished with a repeating BG image.
See this demo (by yours truly) that uses this technique
for a 3-col design:

http://www.positioniseverything.net/thr.col.stretch.html

Thanks a lot big guy. You have my gratitude and respect.