Creating A Web Page - Backgrounds

Adding a Background Colour (BGCOLOR) or a Background (BACKGROUND) to your page is a neat way to make it more interesting.

It can range from your favourite colour to your favourite picture (exercising copyright integrity of course).
But how? you might say....just add the source within the <BODY> tag!

Background Colour

To change the background colour, all you need to do is specify a hexadecimal number code for the colour and then add it into the <BODY> tag with the BGCOLOR= command. Don't know the hexadecimal number for the color you want? Not a problem! Head on over to:

The Colour Palette

Here you can see the 216 'Browser Safe" colours and their hexadecimal code value.

Here is how you will add it to your page:

<BODY BGCOLOR="#??????">

Pretty neat huh?

The BACKGROUND Image -

Want to add an image for your background instead of a colour?
Not a problem! - This time we will be using the BACKGROUND= command instead.
First, upload your image to your 'directory' and then add the image ("name.gif" or "name.jpg" depending on the extention) into the following source:

<BODY BACKGROUND="name.gif">

A suggestion I can give for if you are wanting to use an image as the background of your page is, it is a good idea to use both the BGCOLOR and BACKGROUND attributes in the <BODY> tag.
Reason being that, for people who are using browsers that don't support the 'Background' pattern attribute won't be able to see the image, and instead they will be able to see the BGCOLOR. If you just had the BACKGROUND command and were using grey text, all they would be able to see is a grey screen.

As you can see on this page, I have used an image as the background.
The image is 'bind3.gif' and if you look at the 'View Source' of this document, you will see how I included it in the <BODY> tag.

Do you want an image for your background? Head in over to the GRAPHICS SECTION and surf the links.

Want to find out what else you can include in the <BODY> tag? Head on over to the TAGS SECTION!