Operation Manual

36 Working with Text
♦ A Web site’s Background, which is applied to every page, can be
either a solid color or a tiled (repeated) picture, usually a bitmap
pattern. The tiled picture option works just like desktop
“wallpaper”—so a small bitmap can go a long way. The color
scheme sample shows
if the scheme uses a tiled bitmap.
You can modify the basic colors
(and Web colors) in a scheme, or
set a different background bitmap,
using the Scheme Manager,inthe
same way that you’d modify the
scheme’s five basic colors. To
display it, right-click the scheme
name (or click the Tools menu)
and choose Scheme Manager....
 Before continuing to the next chapter, you may wish to save your
work.
Design Tips
You’ll find general advice on text usage interspersed throughout the
“Web Design from Scratch” chapter. Rather than recap what’s said
there, we’ll just make a few special points:
♦ Hardly anyone actually prefers reading computer text over
traditional print. Try to make your text inviting, at least. As a rule,
users should be able to view each text block in the browser
window without scrolling. Use short, newspaper-style paragraphs,
not flowing, book-length ones. The “inverted pyramid” style of
writing found in journalism works well on Web pages, too: use a
strong lead-in and place essential information up front.
♦ There’s plain text, and then there’s hypertext (linked text). As a
Web author, writing well is only part of your job. Adding
hyperlinks that enhance access to your key ideas is an equally vital
task.