Beyond the Son of Filamentality

Did Someone Say "Textured Background?"

You may have noticed the light, subliminal spider webs hanging in the background of Filamentality and thought, "Dang, that's really cool, man. I wish I could put a picture in the background of my page." Or you might have thought, "Cripes, I hate those pesky background images, they never look any good." Well, if you're somewhere in the first group and want to experiment with textured background images it's about the same as changing background colors:

  1. Find a Texture you like (because of all the images this page takes one day less then forever to load - be patient or else remind yourself that you never really liked background images anyway, then bag the whole idea).

    Helpful Hints:

    • Stick with the subtle (busy or dark patterns are gross).

    • Copy a few images that you might like (then if you don't like one you won't have to wait for the page to load all the images again to get another).

    • If you have access to a paint program that can open the files you just saved, try making them lighter (increase the brightness). This will make them fade into the background more.

  2. Save the image once you've found the background textures/images you like. Here are the steps to getting them into your page:

    1. saving images as...Hold down the mouse button on an image you want (try the right button if you've got two on your mouse).

    2. This tosses you into the Save dialog box. The trick here is to make sure you do two things:

      • Save the file in the same location as your HTML document.

      • Exactly remember or copy the name of the graphic file (hint: you can change the name before you save it if there's a name you want to give it that makes more sense to you).

  3. View the images you wanted to test out on your Web page:

    1. Flip back to your HTML document.

    2. Find the body background line again.

    1. This time you'll actually do a little programming. First, drop the cursor right in front of bgcolor=FFFF99:

    1. Then type in background=the name of your file (notice: it might be in a .gif or .jpeg format). Make sure the commands (Body, bgcolor, text, etc.) are all separated by a space.

    2. Do the "HTML Document Save Thing" followed by the "Browser Reload Thing" to see how it looks. Didn't work? The main reasons might be: you got the image file name a little wrong; the image file isn't in the exact same folder/directory/diskette as the HTML document; check your programing - "background="; try the thorough "Save as.." and Browser "File - Open File" maneuvers to make sure you're loading the file you're updating with a background image.

    3. Tip: If you're going with a background image, you might want to have your background color be in the same general tone/color in case the person using your page has image loading turned off. This way if you fiddle with text colors, the background and the text will still basically all go together.

    So, do you like the background image? If you don't you can return to a colored background by cutting the background=.... Either way, you're probably ready to play with changing the text and link colors.

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Education First - Pacific Bell - SDSU Last revised May 21, 1996
By the SDSU/Pacific Bell Fellows
Applications Design Team/Wired Learning
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/beyond/textures.html
Copyright © 1996 Pacific Bell -- All Rights Reserved