Formatting Web Pages

You format text on a Web page the same way you format text in any other Word document: by using the Formatting Palette, Format menu commands with their related dialogs, and shortcut keys. Chapters 3 and 4 provide details about Word's formatting features.

Although the font and paragraph formatting techniques are the same for Web pages as they are for regular Word documents, there are two options that are especially useful for Web pages:

Background enables you to set the background color, pattern, or image for the page.
Theme enables you to set background patterns, graphic elements, and color schemes for an entire page all at once.

Tip

Formatting and multimedia element insertion techniques that are not specifically covered in this chapter either work exactly as they do for regular Word documents or they do not apply to Web pages.

To set the page background color

Choose Format > Background (Figure 4) to display the Background palette (Figure 5).

Figure 4. Word's Format menu.

Figure 5. Use the Background palette to select a background color for the page.

Click to select a color in the palette.

or

Click the More Colors button, use the standard Colors dialog that appears (Figure 6) to select a color, and click OK.

Figure 6. Clicking the More Colors button displays a standard Mac OS Colors dialog.

The page background changes color immediately.

Click the Background palette's close button to dismiss it.

To set the page background pattern or picture

1.	Choose Format > Background (Figure 4) to display the Background palette (Figure 5).
2.	Click the Fill Effects button.
3.	Set options on one of the four panes of the Fill Effects dialog that appears: Gradient (Figure 7) enables you to set a gradient fill pattern for the background. Set Shading styles, Variants, Colors, and Transparency options to create the gradient you want. Other options appear in the pane depending on the options you select. Figure 7. The Fill Effects dialog enables you to set a background gradient pattern... Texture (Figure 8) enables you to set a texture for the background. Click a texture button to select it. Figure 8. ...texture... Pattern (Figure 9) enables you to set a standard fill pattern for the background. Select the pattern you want, then choose Foreground and Background colors from the pop-up menus. Figure 9. ...pattern... Picture (Figure 10) enables you to use an image as a background. The image is repeated to fill the page. Click the Select Picture button to locate and select a picture file on disk. Figure 10. ....or picture.
4.	Click OK. The page background changes immediately.
5.	Click the Background palette's close button to dismiss it.

Tip

Use care when setting a background pattern or picture. If the background has too much contrast, text that appears on it may not be legible.

To remove a page background color, pattern, or picture

1.	Choose Format > Background (Figure 4) to display the Background palette (Figure 5).
2.	Click the No Fill button. The background color or pattern changes back to white.
3.	Click the Background palette's close button to dismiss it.

To set the page theme

1.	Choose Format > Theme (Figure 4) to display the Theme dialog (Figure 11). Figure 11. The Theme dialog with one of my favorite themes selected.
2.	In the Theme scrolling list, select the name of the theme you want to apply to the page. The Sample area changes to show what the theme looks like.
3.	Set other options by toggling check boxes near the bottom of the Theme dialog: Vivid Colors makes styles and borders a brighter color and changes the document background color. Active Graphics displays animated graphics in the Web browser window when the theme includes them. Background Image displays the background image for the theme as the page background. Turning off this check box enables you to use a plain background color with a theme.
4.	Click OK to save your settings. The page's colors and background change to match the theme (Figure 12). Figure 12. A Web page document with the Canvas theme applied.