Color for Web sites is just like food color for food. Color makes both better. Learn to add color to your Web site with HTML and a color chart. One of the first things people notice about your Web site's design when they visit your Web site is the color so make sure your colors stand out.
Color is a very important feature of your Web site. If you ever took a cooking class then you know that one of the most important things to consider when preparing a meal is color. The same is true when designing a Web site. If you put chicken with mashed potatoes and cauliflower you will have a very bland looking Web site. You need to add some color.
On the other hand if you use fluorescent food coloring to have your site be seen from a distance then you will have a lot of people who will not want to eat it and will never come back to your kitchen.
The trick is to find that happy medium where the colors compliment each other and make your pages look simply scrumptious. This all may sound kind of silly to you but it's true. If your site is boring or if it is to bright people will not want to look at it and it will be thrown in the trash with the leftovers.
When I wrote Another Browser To Worry About: WebTV I discovered that the WebTV people recommend using a dark background with light colored text. They claim it's easier to see and easier on the eyes when someone goes to read your page.
Although a dark background with light text may be easier to read most Web sites are done just the opposite. One reason for this is that throughout time we have written on light or white colored paper with dark colored ink and that's what we are used to. Another reason is that the default color for a Web page is white and the default color for text is black and sometimes it's just easier to not change the colors and go with standards.
No matter which colors you decide to go with make sure you look at your pages with a skeptical eye before publishing the finished version to make sure it is pleasing. If you need to know where to get the codes for different colors try Jean Kaiser's 216 Browser-Safe Web Color Chart.
Dark Background With Light Text Or Light Background With Dark Text?
How To Add Color To The Menu
Once you have decided what colors you want to add to your meal you will need to know how to cook the meal. The main color on your page is the background color. This color will define everything else on your page and by working around this color will decide whether your page is worth eating or throwing away.
To add that defining background color to your page all you have to do is add the bgcolor tag, along with the color of your choice to your page's body tag. Your body tag should now look something like this:
<body bgcolor ="#rrggbb" or color name>
For example, if you wanted to have a blue background you would use one of these as your body tag:
<body bgcolor ="#ooooff"> or <body bgcolor="blue">
After you have decided on and added your background color to your Web site you will then need to decide on what color would most compliment it when used for your text. If you use something similar to the background color people will not be able to see it. You also don't want it to be too much of a contrast or it will be hard on the eyes and no one will want to read it or look at it.
Now to change your text color. First you will need to add the "text" tag and the color code or color name to the inside your body tag. For simplicities sake lets use blue again. To make your text blue your body tag should look like one of these:
<body text ="#ooooff"> or <body text="blue">
If you where making your background and text both blue you would not be able to read anything but this is what your code would look like:
<body bgcolor="#ooooff" text="#ooooff">
or
<body bgcolor="blue" text="blue">
By now I'm sure you have the idea. This isn't nearly as hard as you imagined it to be, is it? So let's move on to link color. You can also change the way your linked text and visited link text show up on your page. You may be asking, "Why would I want to do this?" The answer is very simple. So you can tell them apart from the regular text and so your visitors can tell when there is something to click on. Your visited link text should be different so they can tell what they have clicked on and what they have yet to explore.
Now that you know why you should have them different colors you need to know how to do it. To change the linked text you need to add the "link" tag to your body tag and to change the visited link text you need to add the "vlink" tag to your body tag. Now your tag will look like this:
<body bgcolor="#ooooff" text="#ooooff" link="#ooooff" vlink="#ooooff">
or
<body bgcolor ="blue" text ="blue" link ="blue" vlink ="blue">
That's it for color. If you need help adding links to your pages read Linking To and Fro. If you want to add even more color try adding some images with Clip, Snip, Upload, Add. Good luck and happy Web designing!
