For backgrounds outside of the content area (as per the ???Watermarks??? section in Chapter 2),
you must take care, too. Find a balance in your design and ensure that the background
doesn??™t distract from the content, which is the most important aspect of the site.
Lack of contrast
It??™s common to see websites that don??™t provide enough contrast between text content and
the background??”for example, (very) light gray text on a white background, or pale text
on an only slightly darker background. Sometimes this lack of contrast finds its way into
other elements of the site, such as imagery comprising interface elements. This isn??™t always
a major problem??”in some cases, designs look stylish if a subtle scheme is used with care.
You should, however, ensure that usability isn??™t affected??”it??™s all very well to have a subtle
color scheme, but not if it stops visitors from being able to easily find things like navigation
elements, or from being able to read the text.
Using the wrong image format
Exporting photographs as GIFs, using BMPs or TIFFs online, rendering soft and blotchy line
art and text as a result of using the JPEG format??”these are all things to avoid in the world
of creating images for websites. See the section ???Choosing formats for images??? earlier in
this chapter for an in-depth discussion of formats.
WORKING WITH IMAGES
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4
Resizing in HTML
When designers work in WYSIWYG editing tools, relying on a drag-and-drop interface, it??™s
sometimes tempting to resize all elements in this manner (and this can sometimes also be
done by accident), thereby compromising the underlying code of a web page.
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