I remember in the ’90s when most browsers’ background color was grey. IE was the only one that has a white browser background by default. Others followed suit.
In fact you can change the browser background color in Firefox in about:config by setting browser.display.background_color. I have set this to grey to check if I haven’t accidentally forgotten to add background:white to a page that should have a white background.
I remember when they wanted to fix the weird special-casing of the body tag (which is NOT the root element but can upwards-„inherit“ its color to the html element, which is root) in XHTML. Still today, pages sent with the correct XHTML mime type (application/xhtml+xml) will not show this behaviour. Setting a background on the body tag there won’t make it magically stretch to the canvas.
Sadly, true XHTML never saw any real adoption…
That is super-interesting, thank you so much for this comment.
Would you be ok with me writing a small bonus article and quoting your comment ?
I think more people need to know about this grey background tip.
Very interesting details about xhtml too, thanks!
I remember in the ’90s when most browsers’ background color was grey. IE was the only one that has a white browser background by default. Others followed suit.
In fact you can change the browser background color in Firefox in
about:configby settingbrowser.display.background_color. I have set this to grey to check if I haven’t accidentally forgotten to addbackground:whiteto a page that should have a white background.I remember when they wanted to fix the weird special-casing of the
bodytag (which is NOT the root element but can upwards-„inherit“ its color to thehtmlelement, which is root) in XHTML. Still today, pages sent with the correct XHTML mime type (application/xhtml+xml) will not show this behaviour. Setting a background on thebodytag there won’t make it magically stretch to the canvas.Sadly, true XHTML never saw any real adoption…
That is super-interesting, thank you so much for this comment.
Would you be ok with me writing a small bonus article and quoting your comment ?
I think more people need to know about this grey background tip.
Very interesting details about xhtml too, thanks!
Sure, by all means, bonus away…
xhtml... wow, haven't seen a mention of that in a whileNetscape definitely had a grey "blank page":
Indeed, I'm currently writing about this! (not the main subject, but part of it)