Section 4
MORE ABOUT THE BODY BACKGROUND and HTML TAG OPTIONS
One other thing you need to be aware of is that the web browser will
automatically tile the Background image file. So, depending on just what
you use for the Background file, it may end up looking like a plaid design.
Also, try to keep the file size small. Otherwise it will take a long
time to get downloaded thru the internet. Quite often the Background is
the last thing the web browser displays, so if it is a really large file
the user will see your text on the screen first. Then, later, after the
Background file is finally fully downloaded it will blink in. If you keep
the file size small there is a better chance that the Background and Text
will all get downloaded at about the same time (and not blink in later).
A nice feature of HTML is that most of the options for a specific tag
can be entered in any order (and remember most things are not case
specific). So the example:
<BODY BACKGROUND="myfile.gif" BGCOLOR="BLACK" TEXT="WHITE" LINK="RED"
VLINK="BLUE">
Would also work if it where entered in any of these ways:
<BODY BGCOLOR="BLACK" TEXT="WHITE" BACKGROUND="myfile.gif" VLINK="BLUE"
LINK="RED">
<body background="myfile.gif" bgcolor="black" text="white" link="red"
vlink="blue">
<BODY BACKGROUND="myfile.gif" BGCOLOR="black" TEXT="white" LINK="red"
VLINK="blue">
As long as the primary HTML tag name is the first thing, the options
for it (usually) can be added in any order you want. So you can use
whatever makes things easier for you to work with (as far as finding tags
later if you want to edit an HTML file). The only important thing is to be
sure to use the exact case (upper, lower, or combination) for Filenames.
Filenames must match with how they are stored on the web server (usually
all lower case) or they won't show up (or you'll get an error message that
the server could not locate the file).
That's one of the nice things about HTML. If you make a mistake, or
the web browser doesn't understand a tag, it will usually just ignore it.
If you mis-spell a tag it just won't show up correctly. For example, if
you mis-spelled BGCOLOR as BGCOLORE in the above, the web browser would
just default to a Background color of white (which would make the Text
invisible, since it is also white). But, at least the computer would not
just lock up because of the error (unlike some other programming methods).
If your Background Filename doesn't match the one on the server, it just
won't show up (or you'll get an error message from the server).
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(This page was last modified on: Monday, February 08, 1999)