CSS Background-Image refuses to display in ASP.Net MVC - css

Question

I am having trouble displaying an background image in my ASP.NET MVC 2 application. Currently, In ~/Views/Shared/Site.master, I set my link to the style sheet to:
<link href="<%:#Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css") %>" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
The image I plan to display is in my ~/Content/Images/Designs.png
Here is what I have tried
body
{
background-image: url(~/Content/Images/designs.png);
background-repeat: repeat;
font-size: .75em;
font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
color: #696969;
}
Other Tries Included:
background-image: url(./Content/Images/designs.png);
background-image: url(Content/Images/designs.png);
background-image: url(Images/designs.png);
none of the above tries worked. What can I do?

Answer 1

The url inside a CSS file is relative to the location of the CSS file.
So if we suppose that you have ~/content/foo.css and you want to include ~/images/foo.png here's how to reference it inside foo.css:
background-image: url(../images/foo.png);
Don't use any ~ inside a CSS file. It has no meaning.
So in your case if the CSS file is ~/Content/Site.css and you want to reference ~/Content/Images/Designs.png the correct syntax is:
background-image: url(images/designs.png);
If this doesn't work for you there might be different causes:
The image doesn't exist at that location
You didn't specify width and height to the containing element so you don't see the image
What I would recommend you is to use FireBug and inspect the corresopnding DOM element to see exactly what styles and images are applied to it.

Answer 2

This is what I had to do:
background-image: url('#Url.Content("~/images/foo.png")')

Answer 3

If you use bundles and have the directory structure like :
-Content
--lightbox
---css
----lightbox.css
---imgages
----close.png
then you can make a separate bundle for content in subdirectories by defining the bundle in that subdirectory:
bundles.Add(new StyleBundle("~/Content/lightbox/css/bundle")
.Include("~/Content/lightbox/css/lightbox.css"));
background-image: url(../images/close.png);

Answer 4

In my case I had to back out to the root and include a path to the Content directory.
So even if my directory structure looked like:
-Content
--css
---site.css
--img
---someImg.png
I couldn't do
background-image: url(../img/someImg.png)
I had to do:
background-image: url(../../Content/img/someImg.png)
This worked locally in debug mode (no minification) and deployed to AWS (with minification) correctly.
Also, don't forget if you're using Bundle minification and you use #import in your CSS to still include the asset in the bundle. For example:
main.css
#import url(../../Content/css/some.css)
Be sure to include some.css in your bundle:
bundles.Add(new StyleBundle("~/Content/global").Include(
"~/Content/css/some.css",
"~/Content/css/main.css"));
No need to do this if you're using LESS or SASS bundlers as the handler knows how to find the files and include them (that's the point!); however, if you're doing it as a straight CSS import, the bundler won't know to include it when it minifies.
Hope this helps someone!

Answer 5

It could be a caching issue in the browser; that is, the browser may cache an older version if the css file. Clear the cache and try again.

Answer 6

use below code
.background
{
background-image: url("../Images/backimage.jpg");
background-position: inherit;
}

Answer 7

Keep it simple stupid.
At all times, try to stick to relative paths with css url attribute.
/* Assuming your Site.css is in the folder where "Images" folder is located */
/* Your Css Image url */
background-image: url("Images/YourImageUrl");
The problem with wrong urls is that css can't locate that image as it doesn't understand the convention used on that url, hence the image is not displayed. So to keep it simple use the reigning relative path approach, and you'll never have problems.

Answer 8

For anyone experiencing a similar problem with a razor page.
You can use your regular CSS form, you just need to play with your folder levels.
This avoids having to do CSS inline.
Using normal HTML/CSS
body{background-image: url("images/sparks.jpg");}
My folder structure for razor
body{background-image: url("../../images/sparks.jpg");}

Answer 9

This Works For Me
<div style="background-image:url('/images/home.jpg')">
AS i have images folder direct in my project so
i used in url
/images/image.jpg
like
<div style="background-image:url('/images/image.jpg')">

Answer 10

I would recommend to just drag and drop the image. Visual Studio will generate the code automatically for you,
body
{
background-image: url('../../Content/Images/dark123.jpg');
}
This URL code is auto-generated by Visual Studio you don't need to write the code manually.
Hope this will fix your issue.
Cheers!

Answer 11

Had the same problem. Solved by adding double quotes in the URL specification:
No:
background-image: url(../images/ic_Chevron_bottom.svg);
Yes:
background-image: url("../images/ic_Chevron_bottom.svg");