"Sea Dreams"

Graphics created by Anitra Freeman with photos from FreeStockPhotos.com.

This is an experiment in creating a fancy-looking webpage with a minimum loading time.

Background tile
Download tile here
The background is a simple solid-color tile. The effect of a bordered background is created by a table, with the left-hand column using a graphic as background.

This wouldn't work on older browsers (Netscape 2.x) that did not recognize the "body" tag in table elements. But according to my webpage stats, Netscape 2.x is officially extinct. If anyone is using Netscape 2.x to view your page, they will still see a lovely page — they just won't see the border effect.

An exciting thing about using this technique is that it gives you the utmost flexibility. You can choose your border design and your background color, choose whether to put your border on the left or on the right, or both — and your page will adjust to any viewer's window size, without requiring that everyone load a 1400-pixel-wide graphic just in case one of them might have an experimentally humongous high-res screen.

Button ImageYou can also create the effect of having any number of customized buttons while loading only one image file. For each "button", define a table with width 95 pixels, height 155 pixels, background "seatag.gif" (or whatever name you save the file under.) Then use whatever text you want in the table, at your choice of font and color.

Your choice of border images
Plain background With slightly patterned background With more patterned background

 

You can further decorate your table with your choice of mermaids:
Mermaid with a Seascape Globe
My favorite, same background as this page, 20K
Mermaid with a Seascape Globe
A websafe color background. 25K, but you don't have to use an image background, just a color background.
 
Transparent GIFs that should work on any background
Mermaid with a Seascape Globe
10K
Mermaid with a Seascape Globe
20K
Mermaid with a Seascape Globe
40K

 

More free graphics