CSS Background The background of your website is very important, so please spend some time with this tutorial. If you are aiming for a professional website, a good rule of thumb is to use a light background with dark text. However, if you're just making a website for pleasure, then any kind of color combination is acceptable. With CSS, you are able to set the background color or image of any CSS element. In addition, you have control over how the background image is displayed. You may choose to have it repeat horizontally, vertically, or in neither direction. You may also choose to have the background remain in a fixed position, or have it scroll as it does normally. The following examples will show you how to implement all of these options. CSS Background Color As you have seen throughout Tizag Tutorials, many different background colors are present. These varying backgrounds were obtained without using tables! Below are a couple examples of CSS backgrounds. CSS Code: h4 { background-color: white; } p { background-color: #1078E1; } ul { background-color: rgb( 149, 206, 145); } Display: This is a with a white background This is a with a background using the hexadecimal value of #1078E1 This is an unordered list with an RGB value of 149, 206, 145 In the above example we used three different formats for defining a color: a color name, hexadecimal values, and RGB. Check out the the list of supported color names. Hexadecimal form is a pound sign (#) followed by, at most, 6 hex values (0-F). RGB defines the individual values for Red, Green, and Blue. Example form: rgb(Red, Green, Blue); with the range of 0-255 for each value. CSS Background Image Need an image to repeat left-to-right, like the gradient background that appears at the top of Tizag.com? Or maybe you would like to have an image that remains fixed when the user scrolls down your page. This can be done quite easily with CSS and more, including: choosing if a background will repeat and which directions to repeat in. precision positioning scrolling/static images Let's begin with a default CSS background image. CSS Code: p { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); } h4{ background-image: url(http://www.tizag.com/pics/cssT/smallPic.jpg); } Display: This has a background image using a local path to the picture. This has a background image using the complete url path. Background Image Repeat You can have a background image repeat vertically (y-axis), horizontally (x-axis), in both directions, or in neither direction. CSS Code: p { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-repeat: repeat; } h4 { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-repeat: repeat-y;} ol { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-repeat: repeat-x;} ul { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat;} Display: This has a background image repeating in both directions (default repeat). If you use this option, make sure that your image was designed to be repeated. This has a background image repeating vertically (y). You could this to add a style to the side of your element. This is an ordered list With a background that repeats Horizontally (x) This is an unordered list With a background that repeats in neither direction. CSS Fixed Background Image You may choose to have your background scroll naturally, or to have it in a fixed position. Note: This feature does not work properly in most browsers when placed within a textarea, except Internet Explorer 6.0, which displays it correctly. CSS Code: textarea.noScroll { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-attachment: fixed; } textarea { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-attachment: scroll;} Display: This <p> has a background image that is stationary. So you can scroll as much as you want, but you won't be able to budge this background! This <h4> has a background image that scrolls (default setting). Experiment with fixed and scrolling background to find the one that works for you. CSS Background Image Positioning If you would like to define where exactly an image appears within an HTML element, you may use CSS's background-position. Please take note that there are three different ways of defining position: length, percentages, and keywords. We recommending using lengths -- specifically, pixels. CSS Code: p { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-position: 20px 10px; } h4 { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-position: 30% 30%; } ol { background-image: url(smallPic.jpg); background-position: top center; } Display: This has a background image positioned with pixel values. This has a background image positioned with percentages. This is an ordered list With a background that was positioned using keywords. Note: When using pixels, the location of the image will be (A)px from the left of the screen and (B)px from the top of the screen, where A and B are integers. Note: When using percentages, the location of the image will be (A)% from the left of the screen and (B)% from the top of the screen, where A and B are integers. Note: Available positioning keywords are: top, right, bottom, left, and center. CSS Gradient Background If you would like to create a gradient background like the one that appears at the top of Tizag.com, you must first create an image inside a painting program (Photoshop, Draw, etc) like the one you see below. Necessary Image: Notice that the image is very slim. We are going to be tiling the image horizontally, so you can make the image skinny as possible. As long as the image is 1 pixel or wider, you will be fine. Using the repeat attribute, we set the value to repeat-x which causes the image to span left to right across the specified element. This example adds a gradient background to the paragraph element. CSS Code: p { background-image: url(http://www.example.com/gradient.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; } Display: This paragraph has a gradient background. The gradient background was first made in a painting program and then repeated horizontally across the paragraph element. It makes for a neat effect that also loads quickly! Because the image is very skinny, the file size is also very small. You could also create a gradient that changes color left to right and repeat it in the vertical direction to have a gradient on the side of your web page. Found Something Wrong in this Lesson? Try it out! <html> <head> <style> body { background-color: black; } p { background-color: gray; } h2 { background-color: red; } ul { background-image: url(pics/cssT/smallPic.jpg); background-repeat: repeat-y; color: green; } </style> </head> <body> <h2>CSS Backgrounds</h2> <p>This page has a black background. If you make a black background be sure that you change the font color from its default black value. On the other hand, you could just change the backgrounds of the HTML elements, as we have done for the paragraph and the header.</p> <ul> <li>This list has a picture on the left</li> <li>Because it was set to repeat-y</li> <li>And not to repeat-x</li> </ul> </body> </html>