Stretch and scale CSS background

Question

Is there a way to get a background in CSS to stretch or scale to fill its container?

Answer 1

In one word: no. The only way to stretch an image is with the tag. You'll have to be creative.

This used to be true in 2008, when the answer was written. Today modern browsers support background-size which solves this problem. Beware that IE8 doesn't support it.