Table Backgrounds: Image

Setting the background image of a table can be done easily with styles. In this page we'll look at how to set the background image of the entire table. Later we'll set the background image of individual cells.

Suppose we want to use this image as the background:

deep sea background

As in the previous example we'll first create a set of style rules. The following code goes in the <HEAD> section of the page:

<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
<!--
.deepsea, .deepsea TD, .deepsea TH
{
background-image:url('deepsea.gif');
background-color:blue;
color:white;
font-family:sans-serif;
font-weight:600;
}
-->
</STYLE>

These rules state that for any element with its class set to deepsea, or any <TD ...> or <TH ...> within a deepsea element, there are several rules:

the background image is deepsea.gif
the background color is blue: always set a comparable background color when setting a background image
the font color is white
the font style is sans-serif (which usually shows up better against dark backgrounds)
the font weight is 600 (that makes it bolder to show up against the dark background)

To apply the style to a table we simply set the table to the deepsea class with a CLASS attribute:

<TABLE CELLPADDING=8 CELLSPACING=0 CLASS="deepsea">

which gives us this table

blah blah yeah yeah

groovy dude right on