Background patterns add a little uniqueness to your pages. Usually a small image is tiled (copied horizontally and vertically) to fill up the background. Again, choose text colors carefully so the text can be read over the pattern you have chosen.
Check your text color over the background carefully. There are many combinations that make text nearly unreadable. To improve readability you can:
- Use <B> (bold) to increase your text line width
- Use a larger font size for your text
- Try a different color for the text. Note that colors like blue and red don't show up too well against a black background if you use a normal text size.
If I use WHITE text against this background, it is hard to read
(the white text before this says "it is hard to read"). You also need to verify, using a browser, that the size and style of your text is visible against the background.
You can see some solid color background/text combination samples here (if you're using Internet Explorer 3.0 or Netscape 3.0).
BORDERED BACKGROUNDS
Bordered backgrounds, like used on this page, need to use TABLEs to shift the text to the right so the page content doesn't overlap the left border. The Border Background page shows you how to do this.
A good source of free backgrounds can be found at Textureland. They also have the Color Manipulation Device
you can download to help you pick background and text colors. It will automatically build a correct BODY tag for you as you select your colors. You can change BGCOLOR, TEXT, LINK, ALINK, and VLINK colors. A Sample Window shows how all the chosen text colors will display together over the solid or patterned background you selected.
Bordered backgrounds and theme sets (coordinated buttons, borders, and bars) can be found at Susan's Graphics. The Border Background page shows you how to use those bordered backgrounds.
You can also find some good background patterns (that don't, for the most part, make text on your page unreadable) at the Dwane Aldrich's
Archive of Netscape-Type Backgrounds.
Some interesting "plain" backgrounds (gradient filled ,left solid, right light) can be found at Linda's Text Friendly Graphics Page. An example of this (in orange) can be seen on my sample page. (View the source to see the BODY tag. It shows you how to specify this background when the file is in the same directory as the HTML page that uses it.)
TEXTURED BACKGROUND SAMPLES
Click on the samples shown here to see how text looks on these patterns. Note that you can make text more readable by increasing the font size and/or making the text bold. For more backgrounds (where I got these) go to [Lasher]'s Domain - textures. But, be careful when picking font sizes and colors. Your viewers usually will want to read what you've put on your page.
