Since this is the freshest thing on my mind, I figured it would be the first post that I make. 

For my webpage, eternalkin.com, I wanted a starry background, and the text over the top.  The problem with pictures in the background is that the text may blend in with certain colors of your background making it semi-unreadable, or if you add a background to the paragraph or table, you can’t see any of the background.  How do we find a happy medium?

As I have started to do, and tell my brother-in-law Sam to do all the time, I turned to google.  When searching for this type of thing, I have usually been able to find the answer on the first page of the returned results.  If it isn’t there, I try searching for a different term using what I might have found in those first results.  So, down to what I found.

The first thing I found was the command to make the background transparent, pretty straightforward, background-color:transparent;  Not what I was looking for.  This will make the background of the table you are specifying completely transparent.  I wanted semi-transparency.  Then I found the command opacity, again straight forward opacity:.75;  However, this sets the opactiy of everything in that section, as a percentage, including the text.  So now I had a semi-transparent background and semi-transparent text. 

The winning result was here, to create a .png file that is semi transparent that is 1 pixel x 1 pixel, give it a transparent color, and just let it tile.  This website also explains how to set up the transparent background specifically for IE6.  If you are using IE6 you really should update to a later version, either IE7 or IE8, or even Mozilla Firefox or Chrome.

I hope you found this useful, and if not please send me some advice on what you would want me to share at darthtanner@gmail.com.  Thanks for reading!!