To do what Gill is saying, you’d only have to specify four points in the image (aside from the obvious box-model stuff) on the stylesheet …
By using the rectangle in the center of his image (x1,y1), (x2,y2), (x3,y3), (x4,y4), the browser would then be able to disect the image, and send the four parts to repeat as designed.
#foo {
background: url(‘foo.png’);
background-slice: [x1] [y1] [x2] [y2] [x3] [y3] [x4] [y4];
};
I’m awfully tired, but I think I got it right.