Core Studies 5: Jazzing up Your Home Page

J az z ing Up Your Home Page

Images
The obvious way to liven up your page is to include some kind of graphics. If you have a graphic stored in a file, you can include it in your document by using the IMG tag. The kind of graphic files that you can include in your page are "GIF files" or "JPEG files". When these images are stored in a file, the filename will be something like "file.gif" or "file.jpg". To insert the graphic, use the HTML code <IMG SRC="file.gif">
Where do you get a graphic? One easy way is to copy it from some other location (provided that it is not copyrighted). While you are browsing, if you position the cursor over a graphic and hold down the right mouse button, a menu will pop up. Choose "Save this image as ..." and save the image on your disk.
Here are some sites where you can find gif files:
- University of South Dakota gif collection
Backgrounds
A simple way to add some pizzazz to your home page is to change the background from the default gray to something more interesting.
1. Colors
  You can change the background color by including the BGCOLOR attribute in the BODY tag of your HTML document. For example, the code <BODY BGCOLOR="YELLOW"> will produce a page with a yellow background. If you choose a dark background color, black text may not show up clearly. You can also set four other colored fields on your page: TEXT refers to the color of the text of the document, LINK refers to the color used to indicate links that have not been followed yet (the default color is blue), ALINK is the color used to inidcate "active" links (i.e., while the link is being processed - after you clicked, but before the new page is loaded - the default color is red), and VLINK is the color used to indicate links that have already been visited (the default color is purple). For example, the code <BODY BGCOLOR="BLACK" TEXT="WHITE" LINK="PINK" ALINK="YELLOW" VLINK="ORANGE"> would produce a document with white text on a black background, with the links indicated in pink(for unvisited links) or orange (for visited links). When you click on a link in this document, it will briefly turn yellow until the link is followed to the new page. For more information on colors, look at InfiNet's Background Colors page or "Dougie's Color Picker."
2. Wallpaper and Textures
  Another option is to choose an image to use in the background as "wallpaper". Some background images make the background appear to be textured. To set a background, use the BACKGROUND attribute of the BODY tag. for example, you might say <BODY BACKGROUND="pattern.gif"> You can find some nice background patterns at
  - Ender Design backgrounds
  - Netscape's Backgrounds
Variations on the <HR> line
Instead of a simple line to divide your page, try some Bars and Banners
Animated GIFs
These are the most fun! Try the Icon Bazaar for a great collection.
Playing with Font S i z e and C O L O R

To change the appearance of part of the text, use the <FONT> tag. For example,
<FONT Size=+3 color="RED"> Hello </FONT>
produces this text:
Hello

Of course, you can find many more sources for graphics by using a search engine. Here's the Yahoo Site for Graphics, for one.