Simple Bordered Background Sets

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With An Emphasis On Simple - Updated: 3/6/08

Note: These are very old school web page backgrounds, leftover from the days of Geocities popularity, long before Yahoo! became involved. While they are probably useless to most people, I keep them around anyway.

NEW! Asshur Set 1 & 2 - An Assyrian themed background complete with a selection of buttons and a matching bar. See Asshur Set 1 or See Asshur Set 2.

Centuries ago when I made my first home page I loved the idea of bordered backgrounds. Unfortunately, the ones I found were generally way too elaborate (large download time, too fancy, too "arty," etc.), or themed (pink, flowers, angels, dragons...you know the deal). Now don't get me wrong - I found some themes that were cool, even oriented "toward the guys," but even these were too large or inappropriate. For instance, I don't have anything against hunting or fishing, but a border that tiles fishing poles or the heads of a six point deer over and over is over the top, at least in my opinion. I sort of wonder still whether the "backgrounds for the guys" were even made by "the guys." I don't know.

Eventually I found one or two bordered background sets that I liked, but when Yahoo! replaced their "ad square" with the annoying frame (these pages were hosted on Geocities at the time) even the smaller borders gave my pages an awkward look and made it necessary to do all kinds of work to keep the text on the page and off the border. Since I'm not really doing anything spectacular with my home page I decided to get away from large borders altogther and make some simple ones. This I proceeded to do with the common Paint program, and the result is the very simple, non-elaborate borders which can be accessed by the following tables.

I don't presume to be a graphics maker, but I got the idea that there may be someone else out there who wants to present information in a simple (minimalist) format and would like to use a basic bordered background. With that in mind, I'm making several of these available here on this page. Again, they're not fancy, but they work and they'll add just a little color to any text project.

Anyone who wants to use one of these sets is welcome; there are no strings attached, since anyone can open Paint and do the same thing.

The Minimalist

The sets are divided into five categories: white backgrounds with colored borders, black backgrounds with colored borders, white backgrounds with tiled crosses, black backgrounds with tiled crosses, and cream backgrounds with colored borders. Simple enough; on the crosses, they're are actually so small that they cause a "zippered" effect and probably no one but the page owner will even know they're there. The images are in .gif format. They measure 1172 x 10 high. The borders are only three pixels wide and thus show just a hint of the color. Also, I decided not to make a border for every primary color. This means that in general you won't find a yellow border or a pink one, but it would be easy enough for you to make one in Paint if that's your need. Enjoy.

Take a look at the table and click on any image. You'll be taken to that particular set where you'll find the usual instructions on how to save the images. I have tested the backgrounds in IE 6-7, Firefox, and Opera, and they work well.

Bordered White and Black Backgrounds