My initial dissatisfaction with the height: 100%; position: fixed;
solution stemmed from my desire to potentially incorporate a background image that would scroll along with the page at a later time, although this consideration did not occur to me when I posed the question. Through experimentation, I discovered that using min-height: 100%;
proved to be effective.
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
body {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
#container {
width: 100%;
min-height: 100%;
position: relative;
}
#left, #right {
width: 50%;
height: 100%;
position: absolute;
z-index: -1;
}
#left {
left: 0;
background-color: navy;
}
#right {
right: 0;
background-color: maroon;
}
#content {
width: 512px;
height: 100%;
margin: 0 auto;
background-color: white;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
<div id="left"></div>
<div id="right"></div>
<div id="content">
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
Hello<br />
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Despite functioning properly in my browser, for some unknown reason it does not work on jsfiddle.net: http://jsfiddle.net/HktPN/.