HOW TO SET YOUR BROWSER BACKGROUND COLOR

I get a lotta call for this one, so now all I'll have to do is refer people to my new "book" <grin>. Many people are realizing that they can overcome the eyestrain problem on the Internet by setting their browser background color to a soft, pastel green. I wish I could say that I am the first to discover this, but I'm not. READERS' DIGEST many moons ago discovered that eyestrain is greatly reduced when the background reading color is light green.

It's really easy to set your browser background color. I use NetScape, so YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) just a little if you use a different browser. Here's what I do:

I go into my OPTIONS menu and squick on GENERAL PREFERENCES. Then I bring up the COLORS tab file. Toward the center is the BACKGROUND decision. You can choose between "Default" and "Custom." Squick your mouse on the "Custom" circle. Then squick on the "Choose Color..." button.

The color chart with the "Basic Colors" appears. The greens on this chart are a little too green for me, so I go a little further. I squick on the "Define Custom Colors..." button to bring up the detail color chart. Then I insert the following numbers for Red, Green and Blue (just squick your mouse on the little box next to "Red:" and your cursor will insert there, so you can type in the following numbers; and do the same for Green and Blue):

Red = 204
Green = 238
Blue = 204

(Of course, you can try different combinations to see what works best for you. The above numbers work best for me, setting my background to just the right shade of light-green, and allowing me to read for long hours in UseNet, my EMail and on the World Wide Web.)

Next, squick on the "Add to Custom Colors" button, and the pastel green color will be added to an empty color box over on the left (under "Custom Colors:"). Squick on this color box (the one with your custom color you just set), and then squick on the "OK" button. Back in the COLORS tab file, you should see an option a little lower to allow you to ALWAYS use this pastel green as a background, overriding the backgrounds of other web pages.

I use this option sparingly, only when I need it. What you have done so far is to set your browser background color to a pastel green for all pages that do NOT SET A BACKGROUND COLOR of their own. For me, this is usually enough. It includes the backgrounds for UseNet NewsGroups and my EMail.

Every so often, I come across a page that has a lot that I want to read, AND the BACKGROUND color has been set to white or some other hard-to-read-on color. I do one of two things.

1) I bookmark the page, go to my OPTIONS, GENERAL PREFERENCES, COLORS tab file and squick on the box that allows me to override the page background. Then the page has a pastel green background and is much easier on my eyes.

2) If the page is very long, and it is something that I must read, I use the FILE menu to save the page as an .htm file. Then when I am ready to read it, I load it into my HTML Writer and change the <BODY> tag BACKGROUND command to "#CCEECC" and the text to "black" if necessary. Now when I load the page into my browser, it has a pastel green background. I can read it, study it if I want to, for long periods without straining my eyes.

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