i think your confusing a few fundamentals here or your wording is still off...
the method you are trying to use is outdated and non cross browser compliant... (whether your professor with 50 years experience wants to admit that or not.. there are ways to avoid using this outdated method..) I have to agree with On35 on this one..
your professor needs to teach you how the browsers also render the code..
right now your jogging before you can walk..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(layout_engine) (Internet Explorer, their standards are shit and they needed to overhaul their engine since day one, even today they still have issues...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(layout_engine) (Firefox and a few others, they used high standard rendering engine.. code rendering is flawless)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit (Safari, Opera, Chrome, code rendering is near flawless)
And please for the love of God if your using Internet Explorer to do your projects and development UPGRADE to the latest version or use Chrome/Firefox ... (your professor should also teach you about the headaches of Internet Explorer and how it renders code different from all the other web browsers)
http://www.sitesketch101.com/i-hate-internet-explorer/http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/06/internet.explorer.six/ (many of the same issues persist till today in Ie9 - Ie10... ie6 was the bottom of the iceberg)
Also learning to reset default browser css rendering..
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/This is how I would write this code.. (forgetting old outdated techniques)
Code
<style>
#master{
width: 1000px;
margin:0 auto;
}
#content
{
margin:140px 0 auto;
padding: 0px;
border: 1px solid #000;
background-color:#fff;
width: 950px;
height: 800px;
margin:0 auto;
}
</style>
<div id="master">
<div id="content">
</div>
</div>
You really don't need a master container.
In fact you can remove all traces of it.. Unless you need that there for some other reason that I don't see..
If indeed this is the effect you are trying to get...
This is what I am understanding from your question.
Why don't you post your ENTIRE code..
I hope this made sense...
He is unfortunately teaching you a programming lesson that is outdated and that needs to be scrapped.
This post was edited by Ralphdp on Feb 19 2013 03:21pm