How You Do It:
First off, you'll need a program that will create graphics for you. If you use an IBM type computer, my suggestion is to grab something called Paint Shop Pro. You get a 30 day trial and then are asked to send in a few bucks. You can grab it at http://www.shareware.com. (I don't know an equal for the MAC. Help if you can) Just enter "Paint Shop Pro" when you get there. Or just use the program that's available to you.
You'll need to create an image that is long and thin. The thickness, or how tall the image is, is up to you. I keep it fairly small to cut down on bytes and load time. The width though is pretty set. It has to be long enough to span the entire screen. Go with something at least 1200 pixels wide. You see, when an image is defined as 650 x 10 or
whatever, it fails to address 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 monitor resolutions.
A width of 1200 covers all. The image I'm using on this page is 5X1200 pixels. That's pretty long and thin.
Using the graphics program again, simply make the left side a different color. I made mine lime green. It's an eye-catcher, don't you think? How much of the left side of the image you color will determine how thick your side-line stripe will be. When you use the thin strip image as a background, the color lines up and you have a stripe.
Click Here to see
this page's background gif.
Do I Have To Use Just Color?
No. If you'd like to place an image on the side rather than a color...do it. Just remember it's going to occur again and again. I've seen the NBA's Home Page uses a basketball's texture down the side. Some football sites use what appears to be yard markers, and so on.
What About Text?
Yeah! What about text?!?! Oh, you're asking me. OK...there are a couple of ways of dealing with this. The easiest is if you own and use the Microsoft Internet Explorer. Just add this command in your BODY command at the top of your page:
LEFTMARGIN="---"
The numbers are relative. One is bigger than two, two is bigger than three, etc. You'll have to play with the numbers to get it just right to indent to not cover your stripe.
But I Don't Have Explorer - I Use Netscape!
So does almost everyone else on the net. But Explorer is making a strong move. Here's how I indent. This is only to get text off of the stripe. Now, someone is going to go bonkers on me saying this isn't right and that there's a better way of doing it. All that aside, this is how I do it, and it works. I add commands at the top. I don't add any - commands, list items, or
. You'll find that every pushes all the text in just a little bit. Just keep adding OL's until the text bumps over far enough for you. Let's remember I taught myself HTML. Basically I'm a hack. I use what works no matter how strange it seems. I think that's a good way of learning.
As for placing images on the stripe and other text on the white part and all that fancy stuff - all I can say is that you'll have to play with it. The way I've always seen it done is to use a large table with the left frame cell made as wide as the stripe using the WIDTH="--" command. Use a percentage of the screen. You can get it the way you want it, but it'll take a good afternoon's work. But, hey! This is fun and it's not really work. Good luck.