Shape Up Course Week 5: Time for a Facelift, Part 2

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Week 5: Time for a Facelift, Part 2
unwrapped monitor

With a new background, you may want to make some changes to the rest of your page. For viewers with Internet Explorer 2.0 and above or Netscape 3.0 and above, change your text with just a few extensions to the <BODY> and tags.

Paint by Number

Color is indicated in HTML by using hexadecimal codes: two characters each for red, green, and blue. The

0000FF
FF0000
00FF00
000000
FFFFFF
990000
CC6699
C633FF

characters can range from 0 to 9 and A to F with 0 being the lowest and F the highest. If you want the bluest color possible, you would use 00 00 FF. Or if you wanted only red, use FF0000. Obviously, there are many colors in-between.

You can see a color chart with the codes of these colors by pointing your browser to http://www.lynda.com/hexh.html. This is a 226K graphic unfortunately, but it really is worth the download. I keep it bookmarked and reference it often when I’m looking for a certain color.

You can change the color of your text by adding these colors to the <BODY> code. Here’s an example of navy blue text with maroon links and dark grey visited links:
<BODY TEXT="003366" LINK="990033" VLINK="999999" ....>
Remember you only have one <BODY> code, so the "...." represents where you would have your BACKGROUND or BGCOLOR extensions.

You can change individual words by adding COLOR= to the code. For example, if I want to have my name in a light yellow. My code would look like this:
Julie A. Duncan

Increase the Size

Add SIZE= to the code to change the

size = 1
size = 2
size = 3
size = 4
size = 5

size of a few words. Smaller numbers indicate a smaller font. I want my name to be a light yellow and a large font:
Julie A. Duncan You can also use + or - with SIZE. If I wanted my name to be slightly larger than the rest of the text I would use: Julie A. Duncan

A New Face

Finally, you can change the font face of your text. Technically, you can use any font on your computer. Currently, however, your reader will only see that font if they also have it on their computer. The safest fonts to use then are system fonts that nearly everyone has. You also want to indicate an alternate font or a font that a Macintosh user would have. The safest fonts are these:

Arial (win), Helvetica (mac)
Times New Roman (win), Times (mac)
Courier New (win), Courier (mac)

Many of the Windows 95 machines also have these fonts: Impact, Verdana, and Comic Sans MS.

Put the fonts in order of preference. If I put The reader’s computer will use comic sans if it has it. If not, it searches for Arial. If none of the fonts are available, it will default to Times New Roman.

Really give your page a facelift and use all three extensions in the code:
Julie A. Duncan

Page maintained by Julie A. Duncan, Information Designer.