CSS Gradients with Little Content - css

Question

When I use gradients, with little content, the gradient repeats, how can I prevent that?
http://jsfiddle.net/mcqpP/1/
I can try using html { height: 100%; }, but when my content requires scrolling ... the gradient repeats
http://jsfiddle.net/mcqpP/3/
How can I fix this

Answer 1

You need to set percentages on the CSS gradients, not absolute pixels. And as long as you only care about modern browsers (i.e. you don't care about IE6) then I suggest you stay away from images, the CSS works fine.
I'm pulling my answer from the answer to this question that I wish I could upvote 100 times:
How to get a vertical gradient background to work in all browsers? That accepted answer has everything you need with full cross browser compatibility.
Here's where I took your example and made it work: http://jsfiddle.net/HJvpf/1/
body {
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, red 0%, blue 100%);
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left 100%, from(red), to(blue));
}
Oh and in your 2nd jsFiddle link, the reason it was repeating the gradient is because you set height 100% on html but the gradient was on body. You move that height: 100%; to the body and it works fairly well, but as you can see in my solution you don't need to specify height at all.
Edit: So you don't want it to repeat, but you also don't want it to take up the entire height. Just set repeat-x. http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_background-repeat.asp
body {
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, red, blue) repeat-x;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(red), to(blue)) repeat-x;
}
To have the bottom gradient color fill the rest of the space:
body {
background: blue -moz-linear-gradient(top, red, blue) repeat-x;
background: blue -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(red), to(blue)) repeat-x;
}

Answer 2

Why not render your gradient out as an 1px-wide image and use something like the following:
body {
background-color: #fff;
background-image: url("images/background.jpg");
background-position: center top;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}
Setting the background-repeat value will help you control how the background... repeats. In this case it would be rendered as a solid band across the top.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_background-repeat.asp
Also, using an image should work across all browsers, whereas the moz-gradients could be problematic. The image method above should render very predictable results across all browsers.

Answer 3

I had the same problem but realised that it made sense and so just accepted the scrolling / repeating gradient. You could set a fixed height, not %, but to ensure that the gradient didn't repeat you would need to set the height as bigger than anybody's screen who wants to view it. And you don't know what resolutions people have. My advice is to just leave it.