If you want to target your most highly equipped audience, you need to increase that number to 1680 for those with a 1600x1200 screen resolution. When using a background graphic in the cells of a table, as the LTS site does, one must ensure that the cells are broken up in a manner that will eliminate tiling. This can be a good way to learn and copy many aspects of Web page development. Backgrounds are often used with text heavy content to provide a more comfortable and inviting reading environment. Black text on a white background is an obvious example of extreme, and useful contrast.
Examples lacking contrast are dark on black , pastel on pastel , or primary on primary .
Each of these demonstrate how colors will interact and prevent one from obtaining the content. Specifying background colors is one way to get around the cost of using background graphics. When doing so, though, and the same applies when using small tiling background graphics, make sure that the background does not compete with the content. This also applies to placing graphics on the page over backgrounds. Using a background other than white on a page that contains several graphics is usually not a good idea.