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Website Backgrounds
By: David Leonhardt, Mon Mar 6th, 2006
Most websites feature white backgrounds. Or they sit on a navy
or gray background -- but most of the screen is still white,
like a page of paper set against the darker background.
Occasionally, you might run across more interesting colors -
reds and purples and greens and rust – often looking more gaudy
than professional.
But every now and then, there is a website with a photo or a
drawing or a pattern background. This tutorial will show you not
just how to place a background on your website, but five clever
ticks to spice up the background without resorting to gaudiness.
The basic html code to place a background on your web page is
very simple:
To place a background in a table, perhaps set against a solid
color page background, here is the basic html code:
The image file called image.jpg now
becomes your background. A typical image would show up "tiled".
In other words, it repeats itself horizontally and vertically to
fill the screen. This usually does not look very professional,
so here are five tricks to clean it up and spice it up.
1. Use "strip" graphics. Strip graphics are simply very long
images that stretch across the screen. When they repeat, they
repeat one below the other. To see this in action, view my page
at . The yellow strip along
the right side looks like it is part of the top banner image.
But it is a 650 by 20 strip image, mostly white, with a touch of
yellow along the left side. This works well with patterns that
vary only from left to right
2. Hold the background in place. When a visitor scrolls down,
the text rolls over the image. I used this trick at my personal
website: (Please forgive the mess
– I never seem to find the time to clean it up.) The html code
to do this is:
This works for patterns, but it works best for photos or
drawings, such as a faded image of your company logo or a faded
scenery shot or a faded photo of people interacting. (Remember
that the background should not stand out at the expense of the
foreground text and images, which is why you want faded images.)
3. Another great background trick is to place a smaller picture
in the background, such as your company logo or some other image
that you do not want to take up the entire screen. This works
best against a white background. Here is the html code:
If you want the image to show up just in a table:
I used this function in just one cell of a table by inserting it
in my
tag for my navigation menu at
. Notice how the faded
bottle is in the background behind the navigation links, but it
does not repeat down the page.
4. You can further control the position of the background image.
Consider the following code:
We now have a background that fills the top right corner of the
page. Depending how big it is, it might cover most of the screen
or just the corner.
5. Another way to use background images are as navigation
buttons. While search engines can easily follow image links,
they don't carry the same relevancy as keyword-rich text links.
A background button image can make a text link look like a
button. Each navigation link would have to be placed within its
own table or cell, then apply the code used in the previous
example.
Used properly, background images can greatly enhance the appeal
of your website. If you are looking for a way to spice up your
website, these four tricks can help.
About the author:
David Leonhardt is a freelance writer and SEO specialist.
Contact him at Info@TheHappyGuy.com or visit his website at
Read more webmastering and online
marketing articles at
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