<BODY></BODY>

Contains the content of the page

Used to mark the beginning and the end of the contents of the page. All markup tags, except the ones listed to appear in the header section, are contained between these two tags.

        <html>
        <head>
        <title>Some Title</title>
        </head>
==>>    <body>
            .
            .
            .
==>>    </body>
        </html>

The use of this tag is optional. You can leave it off if you want. I like having the definition in my pages so I use it. Of course, if you want to use any of the attributes then you have to use the tag.

HTML 3.2 Final

Adds the BACKGROUND attribute to allow you to specify an image to be used as the background for the document. Normally this is a small image that will "tile" so that it appears to be a solid image spread across the entire page. An example is:

<body background="paper01.gif">

The example assumes the image is in the same directory where the page is stored. Background images need to be used cautiously.

In addition to the BACKGROUND attribute the spec adds the capability to specify the background color using the BGCOLOR attribute. You specify the color using the form "#rrggbb" where rr, gg and bb represent the amount of red, green and blue color to use. The value for the amount ranges from 0 to 255 and is coded using a base-16 (hexadecimal) numbering system. To specify a white background the string would be "#FFFFFF" or all colors at the maximum. To specify a black background the string would be "#000000" or all colors turned off. Solid red would be "#FF0000", green would be "#00FF00" and blue would be "#0000FF". An example is:

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

This renders a white background for the page assuming the reader is viewing the page visually, with a color-capable device and has not specified their own color scheme through their browser's options.

It also adds attributes to allow you to specify the color of the text and the links using TEXT, LINK, ALINK and VLINK. These attributes use the same color notation as the BGCOLOR attribute. For example:

<body bgcolor="#000000" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FF0000" alink="#00FF00" vlink="#0000FF">

This would create white text (text=) on a black background (bgcolor=). The unvisited links (link=) would show as red, the link would turn green when it was selected (alink=) and turn blue after the link had been visited (vlink=).

You can also add the background attribute with the others.

Microsoft IE

Inlcudes the same attributes but allows you to use the color names Black, Maroon, Green, Olive, Navy, Purple, Teal, Gray, Silver, Red, Lime, Yellow, Blue, Fuchsia, Aqua and White in place of the color code if you wish.

In addition to these, Microsoft has added the BGPROPERTIES attribute which only allows you to specify fixed. The purpose of this attribute is to create a non-scrolling background image. As an example:

<body background="mylogo.gif" bgproperties="fixed">

Internationalization

The standard attributes for internationalization are also permissible but not described here.

The Rusk Family . . . "the Legend Continues"

Michael T. Rusk
Comments to author: mrusk@radix.net