Stop Image from re sizing containing DIV - html

Question

I am working on a site that uses the 960 grid system. It has an issue with the navigation. Rather then try to explain, I'll show you a picture of what I'm going for
I figured the best way to do this would be to have a DIV called navHolder that stretches the whole way across the screen. Inside navHolder is a div with a class of container the hold it in the 960 system. I would give navHolder a top and bottom border to achieve the effect.
Here is the HTML
<div id="navHolder">
<div class="container_12">
<div class="grid_4" id="leftNav">
<ul class="leftNav">
<li>About Us</li>
<li>ABG Way</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="grid_4" id="logo">
<img src="images/abg_website_logo_2014.jpg" alt="abgLogo" id="mainLogo"/>
</div>
<div class="grid_4" id="rightNav">
<ul class="rightNav">
<li>Portfolio</li>
<li>Media</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
</div>
The issue is that the image forces navHolder to become large, so the top and bottom border lose the desired effect.
Here is a screenshot of the image making it too large
Screenshot
I attempted to give the image an
position:absolute
to stop it from resizing the div. This works, however, this causes the navigation options to collapse behind it.
Here is a screenshot
I attempted to create a fiddle to recreate this scenario
Fiddle
But its not quite the same.
My question is then, is there a way to set this image so that it doesnt resize its containing DIV AND still holds its place with the navigation so its on both sides of the image? Is there a better way to go about this then what I am currently doing?

Answer 1

I'd give the container <div> desired size and set the image as it's background without repeat instead of using an <img>, and apply background-size: 100%;
Look into more CSS Background Properties # MDN

Answer 2

I would go about this by overriding the gird (only for nav).
so it would be
#navHolder .grid_4
{
float:none;
display:inline-block;
vertical-align:middle;
}
You would also need to offset the random white space display:inline-block gives so set the font size of the parent wrapper in this case #navHolder font-size:0;
#navHolder
{
font-size:0px;
}
here is your fiddle with my changes
http://jsfiddle.net/bCzK5/4/