Getting Started with HTML - How to Build a Home on the Web

by: Marty Beall

Let's add the BODY tag now. The BODY tag is where you can define what colors the viewer will be seeing. You can change five different things; the background color, text, and three different types of links.

So, all together you have:
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> This is Where your Title Goes </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000AA" VLINK="#0000AA" ALINK="#FF0000">
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

So, what? What do these things mean? Well first off BGCOLOR is the background color. Second TEXT is going to be the color of the words. And finally, LINK, VLINK, and ALINK are going to be the colors of the links (LINK is the color of a link that hasn't been clicked, VLINK is one that has, and ALINK is the color of the link as it's being clicked on.).

What do these numbers and letters mean? These are called hexidecimal numbers or RGB colors. They make different colors when you mix them together. Each hexidecimal number is six characters. What are some good colors I can use?
FFFFFF - White
000000 - Black
0000AA - Dark Blue
0000FF - Light Blue
00AA00 - Dark Green
00FF00 - Light Green
AA0000 - Dark Red
FF0000 - Light Red
This is just a sample of the different combinations you can use, when in actuallity there is an infinite number of combos.

This is all fine and dandy, but I came across a web page with a really neat background image, how can I do this? Simple, just add BACKGROUND="http://www.domain.com/path/to/image"

So, all together you have:
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> This is Where your Title Goes </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BACKGROUND="http://www.domain.com/path/to/image" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000AA" VLINK="#0000AA" ALINK="#FF0000">
-------------------------------------- New Document-------------------------------------------------

1. Ready for the next step?
2. Need help?

Baltimore MD : Technology : Getting Started with HTML : How to Build a Home on the Web