<BODY BGCOLOR="#b0e0e6" TEXT="#191970" LINK="#aa0055" VLINK="#661599">calls for navy blue text on a light blue background, with red links and purple visited links. (Note: The ALINK attribute is the least important of the color attributes and is often omitted.)
Instead of a background color, the designer may specify a background image. For example, the tag
<BODY BGCOLOR="#b0e0e6" BACKGROUND="texture.gif" TEXT="#191970" LINK="#aa0055" VLINK="#661599">loads a GIF image called "texture.gif", which is tiled across the window background.
Tip: Always specify a BGCOLOR attribute. It's not needed if a BACKGROUND image is used, but if the link to the BACKGROUND image is broken or the client browser has images turned off, the BGCOLOR attribute will rescue your page.