[overdrawnprocess]

How do I make transitional backgrounds? Can I do it in dreamweaver?

Lol I don't know if transitional's the right word so I'll say what I made.

i.e. going from a dark blue at the top of the background to a light blue at the bottom.

Thanks for any help lol I know i'm stupid.

[jaymanson]

Hi,

The word you're looking for is gradient It's really easy to make a background like this and keep your filesize small at the same time.

First you need to make a gradient image. If you have software like Photoshop or Gimp, you can do it in that but it may be easier to use this online tool on Dynamic Drive. Make an image of any height you like with a width of 1px. Also, take note of the bottom colour of the graient.

Then, using CSS, you can style the body element of your HTML using something like this:

body {
	background: #000000 url("gradient.jpg") repeat-x top left;
}

This places the gradient image in the top left of the screen, and repeats it horizontally across the width of the screen. Assuming I've made the bottom colour of the gradient black, I've also set the background colour to black (#000000) so if the screen is taller than my image, it will blend in nicely.

Hope this helps! If you're not too confident using CSS, I am currently writing a beginners tutorial which will be free to view online. It should be finished soon, so I will post a link to it for you when it's ready

Jay

[overdrawnprocess]

Thank you actually that perfectly answers my question. I know basic html and how to use css so I've got my fingers crossed it'll work. I'll be looking for the link when you're done with the tutorial all the same though :P

[Dave-Web1]

I find that a nice quality gradiant graphic needs to be about 30 pixels wide, and the color fade has to be vertically straight, alot of tools alow you to angle the gradient but it needs to be straight to work.

Also consider the height, if your graphic that you are repeating as a tile across your page BG is 600 pixels high, anyone with a high res screen, or even just 1024x768, the graphic will 'run out' before reaching the base of the browser window. I tend to go for 1000px or even 1200px high. At only 30 px wide and quality setting 88% its still a pretty small file. Another thing is that some colors don't blend so well together and look a bit dodgy even in 32 bit colour, so experiment.