CHANGING YOUR BACKGROUND COLOR |
LESSON #4 |
Now we have typed some text...moved text around...colored some text...and even made text bigger and smaller.
But how about a pretty background for your page?
Now with your page opened find the button below and click on it:
That will open a dialogue boc for you like the one below:
Out from color click the button that says Pick...
Now the color selection chart will appear.
Let's select a light blue for our example (choose the one in the top row)
and hit OK.
That should send you back to the previous screen with one minor change. The
box beside background color is now filled in:
If you clicked on the right light blue your box should now say #80ffff. #80ffff
is called a hex code and is used to force your visitor's browser to display
a certain color. Did you look at our color chart in the reference section
earlier? Have a look at it now by clicking
here. Now AOLPress gives you a choice of 48 colors but you could eneter
any of those colors here by hand. just replace #80ffff with any of the codes
you see on our color page.
Now just hit OK and you will be taken back to your page with a new color background. Keep changing until you find a color you like! AVOID bright colors most folks consider them irritating. Surf around the Internet and look at other webpages. What color do most of them use for their backgrounds? WHITE that's #ffffff by the way. Using a background color other than white can limit your choices in text colors and such. If you make some text red and then change your background to red nobody will be able to see your text.
Get the point?
But gee Chip I really want a pretty background but I don't like these colors. I see other websites using images and graphics as backgrounds how can I do that? Yeah I hear you. But we'll get to that in a moment. Right now lets learn about how those hex codes work. I promise next we'll show you how to use images.
Don't forget to save your webpage...
File > Save As > Make sure location is right and then click the
button.
A Pitstop to learn what you have done so far
In your editor go up to the top and click on TOOLS > SHOW HTML.
See all of those words and symbols? That is the code you have already written. Did you realize you were writing code?
Look around in all of those words and symbols for the hex code you just used (#??????) that is the line that changed your background color.
Let's try it above!
Click view on the ditor above and see what color the page is. Then close that page and return to here.
White wasn't it?
In our online editor above find the line that says:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff">
Change it from all F's to all Zeros:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000">
Now hit view and see what happens!