User:Rorybob/answer

You can use style "codes" inside quilted brackers '{' to create a background. an example of such:

 {| style="width:800px; font-family: verdana; font-size:90%;" align=center CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0
|-
| style="width:800px; padding:15px; background-color:#660033; border: solid 1px DeepSkyBlue"|
{| style="border:DeepSkyBlue 1px solid; width:100%; border-spacing:0px; margin:0px"
| style="padding:5px; background-color: #996633" |

This would create a page background that is 800px wide, with a 1px wide border of DeepSkyBlue, to a 15px wide border of Dark Purple, with another border of 1px Deep Sky Blue on the outside.

The "width" references to how wide you wish the background to be. No length or height is needed, it is automatically done.

The "font-family" is unneeded for this, but was in my example, and describes which font should be used for the page.(font-size and align are also to do with the text style.)

The "padding" refers to how much of an edge is wanted. For example, 800pixels width Blue, 10pixels padding Yellow would create a page thats 800pixels wide, with a blue background in the main area, and a yellow border, that is 10 pixels out.

"background-colour" should be self explanatory. Colour hexes can be used, or name referencing(See Web Colors).

The "border" refers to the border of the padding. The key points when creating the border are the number of pixels, wether dashed or solid and the colour. No "declaring" statements are needed, just put them down.

The "width" under the border section is how much of the width should be covered by that border. This also makes the main section get reduced to that much of the width.

The "margin" adds the amount of pixels entered to the padding, on the left hand side only.

I have not figured what the Cellspacing, Cellpadding or border-spacing do.

If this was already known to you, i'm very sorry.