Hi kelli1372,
There are many ways of achieving what you want. You can use tables or style sheets ( CSS ). Because I do not know anything about the overall layout of your site I have given you the benefit of both worlds.
The following code uses a mixture of both methods.
The CSS <style> section controls the background image and also the characteristics of the text 'box'. The <body> of the code uses a table wrapped around a <div> ( which uses the CSS ), and is where you use a table for youyr text. Like I say, it is using a mixture of both. Just copy this as it is and play around with the values;
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Kelli1372</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body
{
background-image : url(YOUR_BACKGROUND_PIC.jpg);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-attachment: fixed;
scrollbar-face-color:#cc66ff;
}
.text_box_control
{
position:absolute;
background-color:#ffffff;
top:100px;
left:300px;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
border-color: #ff0000 #00ff00 #0000ff #000000;
}
-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="text_box_control">
<table>
<tr>
<td width="400" height="300" align="center" valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>
The background is set to background-attachment:fixed
so that it will not scroll.
If you want the background
to scroll set this to background-attachment:scroll.
</p>
<p>
Use TOP and LEFT in the style section to position this box.
</p>
<p>
Use the border-width and border-color in the style section
to set the width and the colors of the
borders.
</p>
<p>
Use the scrollbar-face in the style section to change the
color of the scrollbar.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>
You said you wanted to make it more colorful so I gave you the options to set the individual border colors and widths in;
border-width: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
border-color: #ff0000 #00ff00 #0000ff #000000;
and also the color of the scroll bar at the right of the screen;
scrollbar-face-color:#cc66ff;
The background image can obviously be any format - jpg, png, bmp etc and you can use this for example;
background-image : url(http://www.SOME_WEBSITE.COM/BG_IMAGE.JPG);
I put more help in the text itself for you so you know what's going on.
I hope this helps but if you have any problems then pleas post back.
Regards,
Ges.