Backgrounds

Often, we'll find it useful to add backgrounds to a page. This can make a Web page look "cooler" and can help to establish a motif. To add a background to you page, you need only change your <BODY> tag as follows:
<BODY BACKGROUND="image_path">

It's easy enough to do. HOWEVER this feature is often abused! Please make sure you keep the following notes in mind:
  1. You cannot always guarantee that someone will see your image. In most browsers, users have the option of turning off custom page backgrounds and colors, so don't rely on your background. Very old browsers won't show background images either.

  2. Background images take up just as much space as regular images! In general, people don't want to wait 5 minutes for a huge map of Federation Space to load in the background. In older browsers, the rest of the page wouldn't load until the background image did! So, try to keep your file size down.

  3. Try to choose a background that tiles seamlessly. Seams can detract from your page's presence and legibility.

  4. Hopefully, your primary concern for your web page is content. If someone can't read your page because of the background, you've probably wasted your time! So, make sure that the background you choose looks OK on reduced-color monitors. Also make sure that the background image is low contrast so text is readable all over the page. Finally, choose your text, link, visited link, and active link colors appropriately for your background.



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