Sliced Images as Backgrounds

Sure you can, just learn a wee bit of CSS.

E.g.



That is a table with a cell that has a definded CSS "class". In the header it has a CSS stylesheet telling it to use a background for that class and specifys it as an image background located in the image subdirectory (the path and image name can be changed).

Once you learn that, it's just a matter of making the image and placing it in the page through the CSS methods I outlined.

An even simpler way would be to just declare the image as a cell or table background.



The body background can be done by CSS or in the body tag as well. There are many ways to do this without a program.

PS, I stared at dreamweaver for 30 seconds before I trashed it (or at least decided never to use it).

alright. Thanks CDK...I've found a great CSS beginner's tutorial....it's very beginners, and I have promised myself that I would not look ahead, so I'm not sure it specifically addresses my current question, but I'm so glad to have found it I don't even care!!!

You don't even need CSS to do it, just basic HTML. (Craven's 2nd example was plain HTML.) But IMO these days it's better to do as much as possible using CSS, so yeah good luck with your tutorial.

Monger:

What's the deal with CSS anyway? I've encountered pages where I can't help think to myself they made it way more difficult than it had to be using CSS. They coulda used HTML with much less typing and get the same result. Now other stuff, perhaps a different story. So why is CSS the way to go? I've read that it's supposed to give you more overall control. Is this why you would advocate it?

yeah. there are many advantages of using CSS over HTML for some aspects of design, e.g...

- it lets you edit many style properties in one central location
- it saves time by letting you quickly update page-wide design
- CSS can be loaded from an external file called by many pages, keeping your pages' code clean and making it easy to implement site-wide changes, while improving the overall load time of your site
- there are many effects you can do with CSS which can't be achieved through plain HTML
- it gives you better control over layout (layers, relative/absolute positioning, etc)
- often it saves you from typing repetitive formatting code (especially within tables & so forth)
- CSS elements can be changed dynamically using Javascript (mixing Javascript and CSS would be called DHTML)

Edit: Those are probably the biggest advantages for people who don't care too much about making sure to use good development practices.

The main idea of CSS is to separate design from content and programming. There are a lot of good reasons to do so and Monger listed most of them.

CSS is great! I'm using it now !!!! Still only hit the tip of the iceberg - but I'm seeing the potential!!!!!

if anyone reading this is still stuck in using html for both content and design, i urge you NOW...

stop it stop it stop it !!!!!

Good on ya!

Hey Ony, would you mind posting a link to the "great CSS beginner's tutorial" you found? A friend of mind asked for something like that today, & I wouldn't mind having a look over it myself. Thanks.

Great CSS Beginner's guide

I also bought the book Cascading Style Sheets for Beginners.. check in the portal for it. It's an awesome tool.

I changed my whole page around from boring white background to something different now. I won't post a link here, because I don't wanna be getting in trouble lol, but if any one would like to see it, PM me. (btw, it's NOTHING special, i'm just proud to have done it all in code w/o an html editor lol)