If you have ever designed a website, you must have come upon
a time where you have to decide whether to use an image for
your background or to use a plain color. Despite the many
times I've created layouts and designs, sometimes I still
have difficulty deciding between the two. This article is
therefore, written as a guide for both you and I.
Background image are nice and flexible because they allow
you to use any image that you want for your background. You
can put your dog's picture on your background, or you can
put a devil's picture or whatever you want to put there. However,
background image means that you have to load one more file
onto your website, and it does take longer to load (depending
on your file size) compared to using background color.
A browser can paint a background color as soon as it reads
the single-line HTML tag. With a background pattern, the browser
has to wait until it loads the entire background pattern file
before it can tile the background. If your background image
file is 999KB, you'll have to wait forever with a slow 28.8K
modem (okay, I'm exagerrating here!) However, the delay can
be dramatic, and your poor viewer is stuck staring at a blank
screen.
However, let's say you are a multi-colorful person who loves
to see a variety of colors on your website, but then you don't
want to have load a 999KB file and wait forever for it to
load on your screen. What can you do? A great way to get many
different colors on your website is with table cell background
colors. They are fast and you could change the color to your
liking. (Well, it took a little bit time to find the right
color though).
However, despite being able to use many different colors using
table cell and background color, you don't have much flexibility
when using background color. For example, you can't put your
dog's image on the background!
You will have to decide for yourself whether you want the
quick response aof a background color, or the superior graphic
impact of a background image. If you choose a background image,
remember to reduce the size of the graphic file as much as
possible. You don't wait to wait forever for your slow 28.8K
modem to load a 999KB image file!
