HTML Level 1 and 2 Manual

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Screen Resolution and Colours

Designing for 640 x 480, 800 x 600 and limited palettes

Think in small rectangles

A page should be comfortable at 640 x 480. After browser chrome, scroll bars and toolbars, the usable page can feel closer to 580 x 350.
Keep headings short. Keep images narrow. Put the important navigation at the top before a long welcome message.
If a line must not wrap, keep it under about 60 to 70 characters. For exact text diagrams, use PRE and check the width.

The safe colour habit

Strict HTML 2.0 does not need page colours at all. Plain black text on a normal background is the safest choice.
Many pages used browser extensions on BODY such as BGCOLOR, TEXT, LINK, VLINK and ALINK. These are noted as common practice, not as clean HTML 2.0.
Use high contrast. Avoid blue body text because blue was expected to mean a link. Avoid purple for ordinary text because purple was expected to mean a visited link.

A small practical palette

White: #FFFFFF
Black: #000000
Link blue: #0000FF
Visited purple: #800080
Grey rule/backdrop: #CCCCCC
Dark red warning: #800000
Dark green note: #008000

Example BODY colours

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#800080">

Remember: that is a common mid-90s extension style. For strict RFC-style HTML 2.0, use plain BODY and let the browser decide colours.

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HTML Level 1 and 2 Manual.