| The body tag surrounds the body of a HTML document.
The start tag <body> is placed after the end
header tag </head>, and the end tag </body>
is placed at the bottom of the document in the "file
footer" (see below). Note that there can only be one
body tag in a HTML file (some older browsers allow
multiple body tags but this is not correct HTML). Netscape
has extended the body tag to provide a means of setting
various colour attributes, and to set an image as the
background. The possible options that can be added to the
body tag are listed below. Each of the attributes have
default values that would be used if the attribute is not
set. These attributes must be included inside the body
tag:
| Attribute |
Notes |
Syntax |
Background
Image |
Specifies an image to be
used as a background. The image would normally be
small, and tileable. When the image is displayed,
it is repeated as many times as necessary to
cover the background of the browser screen |
<body background=URL> |
Background
Colour |
Sets the background to a particular colour. |
<body bgcolor=colour> |
Text
Colour |
Sets the colour of foreground (text) colour. |
<body text=colour> |
Link
Colour |
Sets the colour used for hyper-links. |
<body link=colour> |
Colour of
Visited Links |
Sets the colour used for visited hyper-links. |
<body vlink=colour> |
Colour of
Active Links |
Sets the colour used for
active hyper-links. |
<body
alink=colour> |
|
Colour
 |
In the examples above, "colour" refers to a
red-green-blue hexadecimal triple! Hexadecimal Colour
Numbers, are written as: "#rrggbb", where rr,
gg, and bb are Hexadecimal numbers representing Red,
Green and Blue respectively. For example:
"#ffffff" is White, "#ff0000" is Red,
"#00ff00" is Green, and "#0000ff" is
Blue. To find out more about this, look at
"Hexadecimal Colour Numbers".
Most newer browsers also accept
common colour names, so instead of having to write
"#00ff00", it's possible to simply write
"green".
A useful resource for colours is
The 140 Color Names
- this page includes 140 colour names with a colour "swatch". |
Examples
|
<body
background="http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/pics/bk.jpg">
|
 |
This image is specified with a complete URL
(use this if the image is on another site). |
<body
background="pic.jpg"
text="#ffffff" link="#ffff00"
vlink="#00ff00"> |
| |
Here the foreground colours are set, in
addition to a background image being specified.
The text colour is white, the link colour is
cyan, and the visited links colour is green. |
<body
background="pic.jpg"
text="white" link="cyan"
vlink="green"> |
| |
As above, except using colour names. |
<body
bgcolor="#ffcc66"> |
| |
The background colour is set to apricot,
while the text colour remains set to black. |
|
HTML Reference
