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Elizabeth Huth <elizabeth_huth -at- gilbarco -dot- com> wrote in article
<TECHWR-L%96100315344916 -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>...
| Question: In redesigning our company web page, the issue of having a
watermark
| or wallpaper in the background came up. I perfer not to have any. I find
the
| text hard to read over the watermark no matter how faint. I also find it
to make
| the page appear cluttered.
| Is there any research or studies out there to back up my perferences or
to prove
| I'm in the minority?
My favorite web style guide, the Sun Web Style Guide, has a good
discussion of this issue.
I had the same sort of argument when redoing our internal home page. I
finally compromised by using a background graphic that was really wide,
1280 pixels. The repeating pattern is in the first 40 pixels on the
left and the remainder of it is white. Store this as a JPEG and its
pretty tiny despite its area. The effect is that the left border has
a repeating pattern that establishes the visual theme and the rest of
the page is white so that text shows up well.
