transparency problem

[megs]

hey, i'm making my own website and i don't know alot about websites but my boyfriend does, and he's also been stumped at a transparency problem we have

i want to make a translucent colum right down the middle of my page, about 500 pixels wide.

the problem we have is actually making it translucent, i tried saving as a gif at 50% opacity in photoshop, but it is either solid or invisible, is there a tool in dreamweaver? (i have cs3 on my computer)

any tips on how to go about it?

do i make a pixel wide image and repeat it? or make a 500x1000 pixels retangle?

please help!

[jessicam]

Gifs don't have partial transparency. You need to create a png for what you are trying to do, I think. Try playing with the different options in the "save for web" dialog in photoshop to get what you want.

[JPnyc]

Use CSS. opacity:0.5; filter:alpha(opacity=50); in your CSS will cover most browsers. You'll need to set a width paramter for the element, for IE. But that's not a problem, you said you want it 500px wide, so:

opacity:0.5; filter:alpha(opacity=50); width:500px;