Longtime users of CSS Positioning will be familiar with Netscape 4's unwelcome penchant for leaving a space between the content of an absolute-positioned block and its border. This three-pixel space is in addition to the padding, and is left transparent, even if the block was assigned a background.
This little-known nonstandard property, which works only in Netscape 4, sets the background color of both the main background area as well as that three-pixel space! Although there is still no way to get rid of that three-pixel space, a browser-specific style sheet can reduce the padding by three pixels to achieve the desired rendering, as long as the intended padding of the box is at least 3 pixels!
If background-color is set as well as layer-background-color, the background-color will fill the content area and actual padding, while the layer-background-color will fill the three-pixel space.
Inherited: No
See also: Section B.4background-color
Any CSS color value.
Initial value: transparent
CSS Version: n/a
Netscape 4 only.
This demonstrates how to achieve identical rendering of a box in standards-compliant browsers and in Netscape 4:
/* This style rule appears in the common style sheet */ #thebox { position: absolute; padding: 10px; border: 1px solid black; background-color: red; } /* This style rule appears in the NS4-only style sheet */ #thebox { padding: 7px; layer-background-color: red; }