Precisely control page and element backgrounds with CSS

原文：http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-3513_11-6177545.html 

This article is also available as a TechRepublic download.

Before CSS arrived, Web developers had limited control over page and element backgrounds. Sure, they could use the background attribute to tile an image over an entire page, and they could control the background color of an image with the bgcolor attribute. But their control ended there -- they couldn't, for example, adjust the position of the page background image, control the tiling, or create a page watermark.

CSS changed all that, by making it possible to precisely control page and element backgrounds via its family of background-* directives. In addition to offering greatly improved functionality, using CSS directives for background control has a number of other advantages: it doesn't require any special software, it works on most major browsers, and it allows centralized control over a site's background images and colors.

Sounds interesting? Then keep reading, because this article examines the CSS background property, which provides an alternative to the older background attribute and is a great tool for manipulating the location, color, position, and tiling of your page and element backgrounds...