MIS 114
Web Page Essentials
Project 5: Adding Color
and Graphics
to Your Document
Lesson 1: Changing the Text Color
Typically, a web page is displayed as black text on a neutral (white or gray) blackground if no
COLOR
is defined.
In HTML a color is coded as a 6-digit hex RGB number. Translation: colors are represented by
their composition: Red, Green, and Blue, hence RGB. The amount of each of the prime hues present in
a color ranges from 0 to 255, which is 00 to FF in hexadecimal. Since each color contains mixtures of
the three primary hues, each taking 2 digits to represent in hex (short for hexadecimal or base 16), the
whole color takes 6 digits.
Here are some examples:
Red (FF0000),
Green (00FF00),
Blue (0000FF),
Magenta (FF00FF),
Purple (9900DD),
Light Gray (BBBBBB), and
Black (000000).
(Adapted from: Daniel Temple's W3Tech
School of Web Design's
Crash Course in HTML.)
- This page's body text was designated as blue by adding:
TEXT="#0000FF" to the page's <Body> tag:
-
<BODY TEXT="#0000FF">
- (See Project 1's HTML Basics
for a review of the placement of a
<BODY> tag in a web page.)
- To override the page's text color set by
<BODY TEXT="#0000FF">, BLUE,
a set of <FONT> ... </FONT> tags with the color's 6-digit hex number designated was used.
To use RED, for instance, set COLOR="#FF0000".
-
<FONT COLOR="#FF0000">
text to be displayed in red
</FONT>
- The
<BODY> tag can be used to set
BackGround COLOR (BGCOLOR), TEXT, html reference LINKs, Visited LINKs, and Active LINKs:
-
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#0000FF" LINK="#000000" VLINK="#FF0000" ALINK="#00FF00">
With HTML Assistant Pro's Background Assistant you can generate the above line of HTML code,
visually selecting the color for each page element. Selected it from the Special menu or
press the function key, <F5>.
Standard HTML 3.2 Named Color Specifications
| Black |
|
Silver |
|
Gray |
|
White |
|
| #000000 |
#C0C0C0 |
#808080 |
#FFFFFF |
| Maroon |
|
Red |
|
Purple |
|
Fuchsia |
|
| #800000 |
#FF0000 |
#800080 |
#FF00FF |
| Green |
|
Lime |
|
Olive |
|
Yellow |
|
| #008000 |
#00FF00 |
#808000 |
#FFFF00 |
| Navy |
|
Blue |
|
Teal |
|
Aqua |
|
| #000080 |
#0000FF |
#008080 |
#00FFFF |
The above was created using MS-Excel. It is based
on Table 2-1, page 24 of HTML for Fun and Profit
by Mary E. S. Morris and John E. Simpson;
Sun Microsystems Press, A Prentice Hall Title; 1998.
One Hundred and Thirty-Eight Colors in Hex Order, the
same colors in Alphabetical Order by color name.
Be sure to check out the RGB Hex Triplet Color Chart
of more unnamed colors by Doug Jacobson.
Lesson 2: Changing the Background Color
It is important that you use both text and background color to enhance your presentation. It is easy to
experiment with various color combinations using HTML Assistant Pro's Background Assistant.
Not all browsers and computer monitors display color settings the same way and there are many text/background
color combinations that would render a page anywhere from mildly unpleasant to unreadable. You, of course,
will want to avoid selecting WHITE text on a WHITE background as I have for the remainder of this sente
Continue with on with Project 5;
or return to the Table of Contents.
Last updated: Dec. 9, 1998.