Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours
- Table of Contents
- Copyright
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- Tell Us What You Think!
- Put Your HTML Page Online Today
- I. Your First Web Page
- Hour 1. Understanding HTML and XML
- Hour 2. Create a Web Page Right Now
- Hour 3. Linking to Other Web Pages
- Hour 4. Publishing Your HTML Pages
- II. Web Page Text
- Hour 5. Text Alignment and Lists
- Hour 6. Text Formatting and Font Control
- Hour 7. Email Links and Links Within a Page
- Hour 8. Creating HTML Forms
- III. Web Page Graphics
- Hour 9. Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics
- Hour 10. Putting Graphics on a Web Page
- Hour 11. Custom Backgrounds and Colors
- Hour 12. Creating Animated Graphics
- IV. Web Page Design
- Hour 13. Page Design and Layout
- Hour 14. Graphical Links and Imagemaps
- Hour 15. Advanced Layout with Tables
- Hour 16. Using Style Sheets
- V. Dynamic Web Pages
- Hour 17. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages
- Hour 18. Interactive Pages with Applets and ActiveX
- Hour 19. Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers
- Hour 20. Setting Pages in Motion with Dynamic HTML
- VI. Building a Web Site
- Hour 21. Multipage Layout with Frames
- Hour 22. Organizing and Managing a Web Site
- Hour 23. Helping People Find Your Web Pages
- Hour 24. Planning for the Future of HTML
- VII. Appendixes
- A. Readers' Most Frequently Asked Questions
- B. HTML Learning Resources on the Internet
- C. Complete HTML 4 Quick Reference
- D. HTML Character Entities
Q&A
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Doesn't Netscape Navigator let people choose their own background and text color preferences?
Yes, and so does Microsoft Internet Explorer. Both programs allow users to over ride the colors you, as a Web page author, specify. Some may see your white-on-blue page as green-on-white or their own favorite colors instead, but very few people use this option. The colors specified in the <body> tag will usually be seen.
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I've heard that there are 231 "browser-safe colors" that I should use on Web pages, and that I shouldn't use any other colors. Is that true?
Here's the real story: There are 231 colors that will appear less "fuzzy" to people who operate their computers in a 256-color video mode. (The other 25 colors are used for menus and stuff like that.) Some Web page authors try to stick to those colors. However, true-color or high-color computer displays are increasingly common, and they show all colors with equal clarity. On the other hand, lots of people still use a 16-color video mode, which makes most of the 231 "magic" colors look fuzzy too. I recommend sticking to the 16 named colors for text and using whatever colors you want for graphics.
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My background image looks okay in my graphics editing program, but has weird white or colored gaps or dots in it when it comes up behind a Web page. Why?
There are two possibilities: If the background image you're using is a GIF file, it probably has transparency turned on, which makes one of the colors in the image turn white (or whatever color you specified in the body bgcolor attribute). The solution is to open the file with your graphics program and turn off the transparency. (In Paint Shop Pro, select Colors, Set Palette Transparency, and pick No transparency.) Re-save the file.
If a JPEG or non-transparent GIF image looks spotty when you put it on a Web page, it may just be the Web browser's dithering. That's the method the software uses to try to show more colors than your system is set up to display at once by mixing colored dots together side-by-side. There's not much you can do about it, although you'll find hints for minimizing the problem in Hour 9, "Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics."
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