« HTML Colors
HTML Images »

HTML Background

A good background can make a Web site look really great.

Backgrounds

The <body> tag has two attributes where you can specify backgrounds. The background can be a color or an image.

Bgcolor

The bgcolor attribute specifies a background-color for an HTML page. The value of this attribute can be a hexadecimal number, an RGB value, or a color name:

<body bgcolor="#000000">
<body bgcolor="rgb(0,0,0)">
<body bgcolor="black">

The lines above all set the background-color to black.

Background

The background attribute specifies a background-image for an HTML page. The value of this attribute is the URL of the image you want to use. If the image is smaller than the browser window, the image will repeat itself until it fills the entire browser window.

<body background="clouds.gif">
<body background="http://www.codedcode.com/clouds.gif">

The URL can be relative (as in the first line above) or absolute (as in the second line above).

Note: If you want to use a background image, you should keep in mind:

  • Will the background image increase the loading time too much?
  • Will the background image look good with other images on the page?
  • Will the background image look good with the text colors on the page?
  • Will the background image look good when it is repeated on the page?
  • Will the background image take away the focus from the text?

Basic Notes – Useful Tips

The bgcolor, background, and the text attributes in the <body> tag are deprecated in the latest versions of HTML (HTML 4 and XHTML). The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has removed these attributes from its recommendations.

Style sheets (CSS) should be used instead (to define the layout and display properties of HTML elements).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 8:56 am and is filed under HTML Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.