This web page created by Kathleen M. Weber on February 4th, 1998.
The opening <BODY> tag of an HTML document can be used to set a number of different values on the web page. In the opening lesson you were given an task of changing the color of the background of your notebook page from gray to white by adding the BGCOLOR attribute to the opening BODY tag.
EXAMPLE:
The BODY tag should look like this: <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
If you were successful in doing this, you web page background should have been white after you saved the file and took a look at it in the browser.
Most browsers have a default setting of a gray background and black text.(This is not ALWAYS the case, as some of you have discovered. Some browsers may be set to display the default background as white. You can also alter the background color yourself by changing your browser preferences. You should keep in mind that unless you change the color of the background, the browser is most likely to display a gray background to the visitor.) The links on the page will be blue before visiting, red when clicked and purple after the user has visited the link and returned to the page where they clicked through to that page.
No need to be stuck with the defaults however because the background color of the document, the color of text on the pages and the links (in various stages of use ) can all be changed in the opening <BODY> tag!
NOTE: When changing the colors of more than one of these, all of the changes should be added to the SAME <BODY> tag. Each web page should have a single opening tag for the <BODY>.
The following is a list of the ATTRIBUTES which can be altered within the opening <BODY> tag.
Example:
<BODY LINK="#FFFFFF" ALINK="#FFFFFF" VLINK="#FFFFFF">
If we were to actually do this example, all links on the page would be white regardless if the visitor had used the link previously or not. The links would also be white while being clicked.
What would happen....
If we REALLY set up the page with a white background, white text and all white links????? Yikes! Nothing would be seen on the page!! While this is an extreme example, it serves to point out something that you should keep in mind. When you are changing the colors of the different elements of a web page, take care that you have not made your text hard to read against the background or left too little contrast between the colors. If you have surfed the web for a while, you may have come across some pages where the text was too dark against a dark background. (One that has been found to be a common problem is a page in which the background is black and the default purple VLINK is used. Dark purple can be very hard to read against a black background!)
Note: There is some stylistic concern that random changes to the colors of the links from the standard set up (BLUE unvisited, RED active and PURPLE visited) will leave visitors confused. There may be something to this, but it seems to be even worse to leave the link colors unreadable on your colored background. If you are changing the background color or using a background image, make sure that your visitors can see your links and even your TEXT. Have a friend or two look at your page to be sure that your color selections are not causing any readability problems!
Whoa! Wait a Minute!!
Being able to change the colors of the different elements of the web page is nice, but the only color we have seen used to change them IS white! How do we know how to indicate a different color??
Colors for web pages are usually referred to as hexadecimal equivalents or RGB values, and are determined by a formula.
The numbers and letters that make up the colors are representations of the amount of red (first two), green (second two) and blue (third two), or RGB value in that color.
Altering the amount of any or all of them creates the desired color(s).
This is how the six letters that make up the designation for white were determined "FF FF FF".
Some of you may need or want to know the formula. (The rest of you, at the very least, may want to read over how to do it if you have a chance). I will not try to muddle my way though it. The good news is that there are MANY good resources out there which allow you to see how different colors look and even some that let you "try out" colors on the web. To get you started here are a few colors that can be used on web pages and some suggested resources to find out more information.
Also most of the newer browser support the use of a selection of color names rather than the RGB values! It is still a good idea to surround the name with quotation marks but you need not use the "#" sign. Example: "BLACK"
The supported color names are:
End of Study Tips for 01/24/98.
This web page created by Kathleen M. Weber on February 4th, 1998.
