Add padding without changing overall width

Question

How can I add padding to an element without adding on top of the predefined width?

It\'s good to define the width of a column to make a clean grid for the layout; bu

Answer 1

It's an old thread, I know. But last time I had a complete black hole about making a DIV with a NOT set width and with paddings, so it will not blow up my 3-columns row and with CSS2. So I put one DIV with float left, on with right and between them a DIV with no float and no fixed width, but I wanted to have padding in it. How about that...

I gived up. :D But I put an inner DIV in the center one and give it width=90%. So far so good, a very simple and not great solution, but sometimes it helps to achieve the look you need. ;]

b.r.