The default background for a web page is a neutral gray. Two easy methods for sprucing up your web page are: (1) use of an interesting background color and (2) use of an interesting background picture.
Near the beginning of every web page you will have a BODY tag. To set the background color, add the attribute “BACKGROUND="XXXX.GIF"” to the BODY tag, giving the absolute or relative URL of a GIF or JPEG picture. The completed BODY tag should look like the following:
<BODY BACKGROUND="./CANVAS.GIF">
The background picture will be tiled to fill the entire space behind the web page. You want to choose a picture with a fairly small file size (preferably under 1K, with a maximum of around 10K) to help in download times to those viewing your web page with a slow MODEM.
The edges of the background picture should tile seamlessly. Several filters and stand-alone programs automate the smoothing of edges for tiling, but high quality tiling usually requires careful hand tweaking of the image.
A common trick is to make an extra wide background image, with the intent that it only tile downward. This technique fails with wide monitors (more than 75% of Macintosh users have a main monitor of 17" or larger), and monitors are getting bigger all the time.
The background picture should obviously be themed to match the subject matter of your web page. Some sites use the same background picture on all pages to create a sensation of continuity and familiarity. Other sites vary the background picture to highlight the uniqueness of each page. The choice is a design decision which depends on the purpose of the site and personal taste.
Generally, the background picture should be approximately the same brightness, with strongly contrasting colors chosen for text and links. Too much contrast or variance in color of the background picture or clashes between some of the colors in the background picture and the text or links will make reading very difficult. Usually, it is necessary to darken or lighten an entire image (bringing it closer to pure black or pure white or a pure pastel color) to make it work as a background picture.
Sometimes a very vivid image is chosen to create a spectacular visual effect. If you choose this option, you will probably have to avoid having text (unless it is large print letters saved as a picture) and complete your page with other pictures or multi-media elements. Usually this approach fails miserably, but it can be very effective for making a “picture frame” background for a large picture. Sometimes it can also work nicely for an introductory home page with a few graphic buttons to access more readable pages.
You will probably want to muck with the colors of main body text and links to create a high contrast against the overall background picture for better readability. You may adjust the colors of the body text and links as well (you adjust one or more of these) by using text and link attributes. These attributes use the hexadecminal red-green-blue (RGB) format (see chart at background color). The TEXT attribute sets the main text color (the default is black). The LINK attribute sets the color for links that have not been visited yet (the default is blue). The VLINK attribute sets the color for visited links (the default is violet). The ALINK attribute sets the color of the link when the user clicks on it (the default is red). The following BODY tag shows these attributes set to their default values:
You will want to choose combinations of colors that match the theme of your page. You will also want to choose combinations of colors that are high in contrast, for easier readability. Dark letters on a light background is easier to read. You will want to avoid shifting colors in a manner that is confusing (such as using blue for text and black for links — the opposite of the defaults).
One of the limitations of HTML and the World Wide Web is that you can not depend on the capabilities of the computer or browser in use (not everyone has Netscape Communicator on a Macintosh). Text only browsers normally ignore all color information. You should also check the look in gray scale (for hand-held computers such as the Newton or E-Mate) and 256 colors (for older Macintoshes and most consumer Windows machines) and 16 colors (for older MS-DOS machines). You can temporarily change the setting of your computer monitor(s) by choosing Control Panels from the Apple menu. The control panel “Monitors” or “Monitors &#amp; Sound”, depending on the age of your operating system, will have a simple click menu for choosing grayscale or color and 16, 256, thousands, or millions of colors. On machines with 256 colors or less, browsers that support these color attributes will align your color to the closest color in their default color palette (so, make sure your page is still readable with this color shifting). And, just to mess with your best laid plans, some browsers will let the viewer choose any background, text, and link colors of his or her choice, over-riding your carefully coordinated choices.
Background Pictures
To download any of these background images, hold the mouse button down over the selected picture until the pop-up menu appears, then choose “download image” or “save image to disk” (or similar wording, depending on your browser).
If you have some hemp related background pictures that you would like to share with your fellow hempsters, put them (and any other materials you want to share) on a Macintosh or MS-DOS formatted 90 cm floppy disk or Zip cartridge and mail it to: Milo, PO Box 1361, Tustin, CA, 92781, USA. Do not send your originals — send copies. Your disk(s) will not be returned. Make sure you own the copyright on any materials you donate. Include contact or web page or copyright information if you want credit.
on an Apple 
Macintosh 
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