Re: HTML background color

Brian Behlendorf (brian@wired.com)
Thu, 22 Sep 1994 17:17:30 -0700 (PDT)

On Fri, 23 Sep 1994, Inherent Network Admin Center wrote:
> > Mosaic has the capability to change the background color of a page
> > in the prefs. I asked NCSA if it was possible for their program to
> > read a "page color" tag, and then set the page color appropriately.
> > They told me that would take a change in HTML specs and only then
> > will they support it.
>
> I agree whole heartedly with the desire for the ability to set
> the background color of a Web browser. The argument has come up many
> nights and many days about how an icon is going to look over a
> background color. It would be nice to either:
>
> 1) have the background color bleed through
> 2) set the background color to that of the image <i.e. with a
> tag>

Actually, in my opinion there's nothing special needed for this -
real graphic designers know better than to set the background color to
something that will munge with an icon or other inlined image on the screen.
As far as being downwards-compatible for users using less than 256 colors
in their graphical browser... I don't know, but that's an issue I'd
rather leave up to the client. All graphical apps I know of are at least
capable of 256 colors, so I don't think it's unreasonable to design for.

In Dave Raggett's HTML 3.0 presentation at WWW'94, he suggested that one
solution might be to have a background bitmap that gets tiled - thus more
complex blackgrounds are possible, something we'd really like.

I have a whole HTML wish list of items that could only be implemented in
the spec, but I'll save that for www-html....

Brian