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 BODY, Colours and Backgrounds
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 <BODY TEXT="#000000"
       LINK="#0000FF" 
      VLINK="#FF0000" 
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Hypertext Skills Group 
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BODY, Colours and Backgrounds

 
  <P>

The <BODY> and </BODY> tags indicate the part of an html document that contains the text and graphics etc. that are to appear on the screen. The <BODY> tag appears immediately after </HEAD>, and </BODY> is at the bottom of the document, immediately before </HTML> 

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The <BODY> tag can be used to specify the colours that a browser is to use for text, for links and for the background when displaying the page. Each takes a similar form. This page, for instance, specifies black text, links which are blue if the pages they point to have not been visited before, red after they have been visited and green while the link is active (i.e. being clicked on.) The background is white. 

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This specification is written like this. 

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  <PRE>
 
      <BODY TEXT="#000000"
            LINK="#0000FF" 
           VLINK="#FF0000" 
           ALINK="#00FF00" 
         BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> 
  </PRE>
 
  <P>

While it is clear that the various parts indicate TEXT colour, LINK colour, VisitedLINK colour, ActiveLINK colour and BackGroundCOLOuR, the way the colours are represented may be puzzling. 

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   <A HREF="hex.htm">

   </A>
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how colours are represented 

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   <A HREF="fuchia.htm">

   </A>
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a page with white text on a fuchia background 

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Most html editors automate the process of turning a specified colour into the hexadecimal representation. 

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  <HR>
 
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If the colours to be used are not specified, then browsers will display the page using default settings. Default settings vary from browser to browser. 

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  <P ALIGN=Center>
   <A HREF="plain.htm">

   </A>
  </P>

a page with no colours specified 

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Backgrounds

 
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In addition to specifying colours, an image can be specified as a background for the page. The image is held in a file, usually in .gif format. (See the page about images for an explanation of this.) 

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  <P ALIGN=Center>
   <IMG SRC="flowers.gif">
 

  </P>
 
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   <A HREF="flowers.htm">

   </A>
  </P>

a page using BACKGROUND="flowers.gif" 

  <HR>
 
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   <A HREF="contents.htm">

   </A>
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Contents 

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