Background Color
The background-color property specifies the background color of an element.
The background color of a page is defined in the body selector:
Example
body {background-color:#b0c4de;}
With CSS, a color is most often specified by:
- a HEX value - like "#ff0000"
- an RGB value - like "rgb(255,0,0)"
- a color name - like "red"
Look at CSS Color Values for a complete
list of possible color values.
In the example below, the h1, p, and div elements have different background colors:
Example
h1 {background-color:#6495ed;}
p {background-color:#e0ffff;}
div {background-color:#b0c4de;}
Background Image
The background-image property specifies an image to use as the background of an
element.
By default, the image is repeated so it covers the
entire element.
The background image for a page can be set like this:
Example
body {background-image:url('paper.gif');}
Background Image - Repeat Horizontally or Vertically
By default, the background-image property repeats an image both horizontally
and vertically.
Some images should be repeated only horizontally or vertically, or they
will look strange, like this:
Example
body
{
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
}
If the image is repeated only horizontally (repeat-x), the background will look
better:
body
{
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
background-repeat:repeat-x;
}
Background Image - Set position and no-repeat
Showing the image only once is specified by the background-repeat property:
Example
body
{
background-image:url('img_tree.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}
Background - Shorthand property
As you can see from the examples above, there are many properties to consider
when dealing with backgrounds.
To shorten the code, it is also possible to specify all the properties in one
single property. This is called a shorthand property.
The shorthand property for background is simply "background":
When using the shorthand property the order of the property values is:
- background-color
- background-image
- background-repeat
- background-attachment
- background-position
It does not matter if one of the property values is missing, as long as the
ones that are present are in this order.
