[setishock]

Originally Posted by tipoboy

Updated: now added instructions on how to have it stretch through your welcome back pm column!

You sparked an idea I tried out and found it works. I thought I'd come back and share it.

The simplest way to get your image or color to go all the way across is to remember the right> "welcome" and the left> "directory path(bread crumbs)" are cells inside a table. You want to add the image or color to the table parameters so it covers the entire table background.
In the code below from the navbar template you keep the code in blue you added from the first part of his instructions. Then add the background code you see in red.

<br />
<!-- breadcrumb, login, pm info -->
<table class="tborder" 
background="(http://)your.forum.name/path/to/your/image" 
cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
<tr>
<td class="altbg" width="100%">
   <if condition="is_array($navbits)">
   <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
   <tr valign="bottom">
    <td><a href="#" onclick="history.back(1); return false;"><img src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/navbits_start.gif" alt="$vbphrase[go_back]" border="0" /></a></td>

Leave the () out of the url. I couldn't keep the url from parsing and messing up my code demo.
Now go to the .altbg in the additional CSS definitions and remove the entire background statement. Leave the height, width, and text align statements.
When you're done you get some thing like what I have in the navbar in this theme I'm working on:
http://animeappeal.com/forums/index.php?styleid=47