Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

How to add a black or colored border to your Web page?

I saw that on the anniversary of 9/11 you changed your Web site home page to have a thick black border and some commemorative words. Nice, low key, and still effective. How'd ya do it?

Dave's Answer:

Glad you noticed. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to commemorate the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, and the loss of life both on that day and subsequently in the Middle East as a direct result of the attack. A graphic seemed too subtle. A blog entry seemed like an awkward fit on a tech Q&A blog, and replacing the site with a one-page commemorative seemed a bit too over the top for me. So a black edge seemed like a good middle ground.

To accomplish that, I made a surprisingly simple tweak to the HTML template that's used to build the home page for the Ask Dave Taylor site. Most weblogs have template-based site design -- which is one of the great benefits of using a weblog tool as the foundation for a web site, of course -- so it's pretty straightforward.

In the "index.html" template I found the following lines:

<body style='background-color:#ffc;background-image: url(/Graphics/pinstripebg.gif);' >

<div style="font-size:75%;font-weight:bold;color:#555;text-align:right;">You're finding <strong>free tech support</strong> at AskDaveTaylor.com</div>

and changed them thusly (additions and changes are in bold):

<body style='background-color:#ffc;background-image: url(/Graphics/pinstripebg.gif);border:20px solid #111;margin:1px; padding:5px;'>

<div style="font-size:75%;font-weight:bold;color:#555;text-align:right;">The black border is in memory of those people who died in 9/11 and subsequently in the war in Iraq</div>

The results were a page that looked like this:

I think it was just the right balance between being consistent with the theme of this site and honoring the people who have died. I hope you agree.

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Categorized: HTML and CSS (Article 8502)
Tagged: 9/11, css, html, markup, september 11, web design
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Comments

I think this was an appropriate display of
empathy, and appropriate way to do so.

Posted by: Ed Shaz at September 12, 2008 2:08 PM

plsssssssss how to add my backround in my profile

Posted by: amy at September 17, 2008 12:55 AM

Dave,
I have been on your site for a couple of days and now have it bookmarked, trying to learn all that I can cram into my 70 year old grey matter. Your site is really great. I am somewhat computer literate, but not as much as I would like to be.

I am a little confused on a couple of issues regarding html. First, on your post regarding google maps and the location of a house or other landmark in a website, where would one post it? I have a commercially produced website and do not know where to post a map. Also, I practice using my word pad and then save it as a .html file, and then bring it up in my firefox browser.

If allowable I will probably have many more questions. Thanks for such a good website for an old fart.

Posted by: Stanley Cobb at December 23, 2008 8:21 AM

Stanley, if you aren't sure where you'd add a map to your nascent site, then maybe you don't need to include one. Seriously. If you had a retail establishment, for example, you could quite logically have a page "Find Us" or "Visit Us". On a personal site, though, I'd generally recommend you err on the side of privacy and not include your home address or a map on where you live, other than in the most general terms.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at February 16, 2009 7:24 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!