Background Graphics
Many background sites require you to credit the site and/or provide a link. The following are free backgrounds you can use on school or personal (but not commercial) web pages.
- Background City has a good
selection of free backgrounds but you must link back to their site on one of
your pages.
- Realm Graphics has
over 300 backgrounds. If you click a background sample, an example page will
be created to show the background used in a webpage.
- WebGround
has lots of backgrounds in different shades of grey.
- Texture Land has close to 200 strange textures which can be previewed with black, grey, and white text.
- Or make your own background graphic with a graphics editor. Light, nearly
transparent images work the best. Here are some examples using my face lightened and yellowed, clouds dithered and colorized, the tiles of a subway sign blurred and lightened. Be careful—some perfectly nice graphics make truly dreadful background choices.
Icons and Graphics
Icons, bullets, lines, and other graphics will cause your page to load more slowly. Use graphics wisely. Animated gifs (like one) are larger than plain gifs, and can become annoying. If resized, animated gifs will become static. The animation will not run in most web page contruction software, but will animate when loaded onto the server.
- DiscoverySchool.com has great school graphics. You can use up to 10 images for free in your website as long as you credit and link back to DiscoverySchool.
- Pics 4 Learning is an image
library for teachers and students. The collection consists
of thousands of images that have been donated by students,
teachers, and amateur photographers that may be used by teachers and students
in print, multimedia, and video productions, including web pages.
- Mozilla: Netscape’s mascot appears in many costumes. Be patient, this page has many many graphics and takes some time to load.
- Animation Factory: has only a few free images, many more for members who pay a monthly fee.
- Brown Bag Animations: a small selection, but free!
- Image O Rama includes
over 3000 lines, bullets, buttons, and animated graphics.
- Bullets from Realm Graphics
- Buttons from Realm Graphics
- Lines from Realm Graphics
Banner Making Tools
Those fancy fonts you use while creating your webage will only display correctly if the person viewing your page has the same font loaded on their computer.You can make your own banners and buttons with a graphics editor, or use an online tool.
- Banner Generator: The easiest banner making tool—a limited selection of fonts but simple to use.
- Cool Text: With Cool Text you can easily type in the words you want in a wide variety of fonts and Cool Text will turn it into a banner or button you can use on your webpage. The page banners on this site were created here. Warning: it is tempting to waste a lot of time on this site making totally useless stuff!
