Creating Web Sites Bible, Third Edition

Chapter 6. The Elements of Color and Images In Web Pages

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Setting color attributes

• Using the three C's: complement, contrast, and coordination

• Using color names and hex numbers

• Popular graphics formats

• Setting background and foreground colors

• Adding background images

• Adding images

• Aligning images

• Setting image size

• Solving image problems

Color is your most powerful tool when you create your Web site. How you use color in your Web site determines one of two outcomes:

• Visitors will come back to your Web site and perhaps comment on what a nice Web site you have.

• Your Web site will become the object of education in what not to do.

This chapter discusses not only how to set color attributes in HTML and CSS but, also the proper use of color so that you can avoid the second outcome. This discussion not only includes information about how to select background, text, and graphic colors to give your site's pages the greatest impact for visitors, but also how to select colors. While we cannot guarantee exact color matches across screen types, we can try to get as close as possible.

Setting Color Attributes

When you start your Web browser for the first time, the browser has default settings for how certain elements on a page (such as links, text, headers, and so on) will appear on the screen. However, you can customize the colors on the screen in Internet Explorer (IE), FireFox, and practically any other browser, no matter what computer or operating system you run.

Major browsers in computing ...