Don Pedro's Free Backgrounds

About Backgrounds in General

The background together with your logo is your distinctive internet "ID" separating your site from all other sites on the net. Choose a background that makes contrast with your logo, while at the same time gives harmony to the page.

There is some research indicating that an internet page with a white background gives an impression of containing less information than a page with some kind of coloured background. The latter one is perceived as more solid information wise (white = empty?).

A background picture is not a miniature of the whole background. When you use a background picture, the first one will come in the top left corner. Then the picture starts multiplying itself towards the right until the first row is full. After that the process continues row by row in the same way until the whole screen is full of a big number of pictures side by side and on top/below each other.

It can be a good idea to use the preview below before choosing your final picture. When you want a preview of the background full on your screen, click on the background picture name below the picture (i.e.: BG1, etc.). To get back to this page, please close the new window.

If you want to check picture file size put your mouse arrow on the picture.

If you have a dark blue background, your links cannot be seen - they will fade into the background (like BG1).

Subtle colours found in the nature are the most appropriate for backgrounds; blue (sky) and grey (cement, tree trunks) can be seen almost everywhere in the world - good second "runner-ups" would be yellow (sand) and green (grass and leaves). Be aware most colour blind persons cannot distinguish between green and red (See don Pedro's How to Choose your Website Colours).

Pic's 6-7 are especially created for Don Pedro by www.backgroundcity.com/ as per special agreement. Backgroundcity have a thousand more background pictures.

Some more backgrounds will be added later. More free background sources:
www.freebackgrounds.com/
www.freebackgroundzone.com/
Web Clip Art Background Images

How To Choose and Use a Background

To take a background picture:

Most browsers: you put your mouse arrow on the picture you want, give a "right-hand-click" and choose "Save picture as ...".
Mac users: follow your browser's instructions.
AOL browsers: switch off picture file compressing function first, then follow "Most browsers".

You need only one background because you want to keep the same background and logo on every page.

If you copy a background picture without using my web design services, please add in your code immediately after your "Body tag": .

Instead of background picture, consider using a flat colour (blue, yellow, green, or whatever) by hexadecimal colour code or you can name your colour. The file size of your page is considerably smaller using colour code or colour name compared with a background picture. The picture often being about 3-5 KB while the code is negligible. When your page file size including pictures is small the download time will be very short.

Get tips on using the CSS background property.

When you use a background picture your code looks like this:
<BODY background="images/picture_name.gif">
If you use the hexadecimal code you use a slightly different code:
<BODY bgcolor="#......"> Instead of the dots you put the hex. number. If you want to use the colour name, then you don't use the number sign (#), just write colour name between quotation marks. The # sign tells your browser to use the hexadecimal code.

I recommend you choose a light background. The reason for this is: IF your visitor is sitting in a very brightly lighted room (office), then most probably the brightness on that computer has been turned down to give a better picture. If you have a slightly dark background it will grow even darker and may be your visitor cannot read your text anymore. If you have a light background more darkness doesn't matter because your text will also get darker! See also Don Pedro's How to Choose your Website Colours.

If you intend to take/"borrow" a picture from an other web site be careful about copyright. See Don Pedro's Picture Copyright on the Internet. Get an explanation of "fair use" and other copyright terms in connection with website content on the Internet.