views:

2555

answers:

6

What is the correct usage of the CSS background-image property? The key things I am trying to understand is

  1. Does it need to be in quotes i.e.: background-image: url('images/slides/background.jpg');
  2. Can it be a relative path (as above) or must it be a full URL?
  3. Any other points I should be aware of to make sure it works correctly across standards compliant browsers.
A: 

You don't need to use quotes and you can use any path you like!

Rigobert Song
+3  A: 
  1. No you don’t need quotes.

  2. Yes you can. But note that relative URLs are resolved from the URL of your stylesheet.

  3. Better don’t use quotes. I think there are clients that don’t understand them.

Gumbo
+1 for the fact URLS are resolved from the URL of your style sheet - never knew that. Solves SO much
Robert MacLean
+2  A: 

1) putting quotes is a good habit

2) it can be relative path for example:

background-image: url('images/slides/background.jpg');

will look for images folder in the folder from which css is loaded. So if images are in another folder or out of the CSS folder tree you should use absolute path or relative to the root path (starting with /)

3) you should use complete declaration for background-image to make it behave consistently across standards compliant browsers like:

background:blue url('/images/clouds.jpg') no-repeat scroll left center;
TheVillageIdiot
Don’t you mean `background` instead of `background-image`?
Gumbo
thanks for pointing @Gumbo it should be *background*
TheVillageIdiot
+17  A: 

The path can either be full or relative (of course if the image is from another domain it must be full).

You don't need to use quotes in the URI; the syntax can either be:

background-image: url(image.jpg);

Or

background-image: url("image.jpg");

However, from W3:

Some characters appearing in an unquoted URI, such as parentheses, commas, white space characters, single quotes (') and double quotes ("), must be escaped with a backslash so that the resulting URI value is a URI token: '(', ')', '\,'.

So in instances such as these it is either necessary to use quotes or double quotes, or escape the characters.

Perspx
+1 for proving the W3 link
Robert MacLean
+1 W3 link, others please follow when possible, million thanks in advance.
Newbie
No probs :)
Perspx
A: 

Have a look at the respective sitepoint reference pages for background-image and URIs

  1. It does not have to be in quotes but can use them if you like. (I think IE5/Mac does not support single quotes).
  2. Both relative and absolute is possible; a relative path is relative to the path of the css file.
Ben
+2  A: 

Relative paths are fine and quotes aren't necessary. Another thing that can help is to use the "shorthand" background property to specify a background color in case the image doesn't load or isn't available for some reason.

#elementID {
    background: #000 url(images/slides/background.jpg) repeat-x top left;
}

Notice also that you can specify whether the image will repeat and in what direction (if you don't specify, the default is to repeat horizontally and vertically), and also the location of the image relative to its container.

Bryan