When choosing colors for your site, you should choose the colors that load the fastest and that will be seen by most all browsers with ease. Most computers browse the web in 256 color (8-bit) or even 256 grayscale, some such as Netscape in just 216 colors. An 8-bit color is represented by a hex value made up of 6 hexidecimal characters. The first two characters represent the amount of red, the middle two the amount of green, and the last two the amount of blue (hence, the name, RGB value). If you confine your colors to any combination where red, green and blue are represented by the hex numbers 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, or FF, your colors will be within the cross-browser color range. This gives you 6 possible values for red, for green, and for blue, or 6x6x6 color combinations, which equals 216 color values. Using 16.5 million colors (or anything more than 256) will be automatically replaced (dithered) by one of the nearest system colors and will make the graphics look grainy on 256 color screens. In the cross-browser color palette below are 216 of the 256 RGB Color Codes used by both Internet Exporer and Netscape Navigator plus 4 grayscale codes. All 256 grayscale colors are in the next table. You will find each RGB code is accompanied by it's color in the background. Use these palettes to pick colors for your site. When you choose a color, identify it by the RGB code ie. #000000 for black or #FFFFFF for white, etc.
For textured backgrounds, we have the capability to make any textured background you like. For solid colors a graphic size of 50x50 pixels is large enough to prevent a patterned background look but can be more easily achieved using the background color command. However for patterns and gradients, it's best to make an image at least 1024 pixels wide so the image won't be repeated on higher resolution screens. When viewing your site, you can have the background scroll up and down as guests view content lower on your page or have the background stay put while the content scrolls. These are scrolling backgrounds which are common and non-scrolling or watermark backgrounds.