W

hen I'm not practicing underwater basketweaving, I spend my time as a software design engineer in the Developer Relations Group at Microsoft. I've also been known to write articles for the Microsoft Developer Network News and recently hosted "World Wide Live! Developing for Windows 95," a groundbreaking 8-hour telecast that was broadcast to a large audience of developers around the world.

On the pages listed here, I've tried to put together examples that illustrate some of the useful capabilities of Internet Explorer (available starting in version 2.0). The key feature I've focused on is the new BGCOLOR attribute that Internet Explorer 2.0 has added to table cells.

We all know that any graphics added to a page will increase the time required to download the page. Like you, I've run into pages that seem to take forever to download. For page layout and visual appearance, the more that can come from the actual HTML code that defines the page, the better.

Take a look at this page. Aside from the "branding" graphics at the very top and the very bottom, the only graphic elements are my picture in the upper left, and the Microsoft logo in the lower right. All of the other visual elements were created using tables. This includes the drop cap that starts the first paragraph, the little colored bars that separate items in my topic list, and even the shadow around my photo.

Take a look at some of my other pages. Hopefully, they will give you some ideas on how to utilize some of these features on your own pages.