CSS oversight

January 5, 2008

I was speaking to a friend this evening about a new site he’d put up, and I noticed yet again something that’s perplexed me for years.

I changed my Firefox settings to use a gray background instead of white.  It’s easier on the eyes in many cases, and I’ve had it set that way for years.  I’ve also set my Windows settings to a gray background custom theme when using Windows as well, so that all the applications will reflect that, as they are able.  Anywho… I noticed again tonight that this new site my friend had put up had many custom visual settings in the CSS file, but none for the background color.  Font colors, images, div backgrounds, etc. were all set to look good, assuming you had a white background.  If you didn’t have a white background, it was difficult to read.  Not impossible, but difficult.

Now, I *know* I’m in the minority of people who change their default settings.  I understand that.  What I don’t understand, I guess, is going through all the trouble of setting dozens of colors on every conceivable aspect of your UI *except* the background color.  Just an oversight, but it’s a rather pervasive; even Yahoo.com doesn’t set a background-color, yet they set a font color for the body.  If my custom background color was the same as their font color, I’d certainly miss out on some of the text, no?

So I put it out to you designers out there – do you set a background-color on your HTML body element?  If not, why not?

Posted in Design, Development, Web