Requested by adeline on my tagboard.
Many ways to do tiled backgrounds... Some common ways people (or maybe just me :P) use them are:
1. Patterns.
Lots of nicey ones on squidfinger.com etc... When you pick one you like save the image to your computer, open the file, and go to Edit>Define Pattern, so you get your pattern in your presets. Fill your canvas or complete your skin with the pattern and to get it working on browsers, you have to upload the image as well as your pattern to your photobucket etc. And then in the codes you have to add a line of CSS as shown below:
So you get your tiled background!
2. Columns.
In a lot of blogskins these days you see skins with columns (though personally I do not like that, I find it a hassle to code and crop etc... heh). These are actually tiled background. You create them with (commonly) the use of shapes along with your graphic. To get it working you have to get the column background thingy by itself. Two ways to do it.
If you have the column, and the background is a pattern:
FInd out the height of your pattern (for example 15px), then the width of your computer resolution (for me I used 1024px and here's a handy hint, always do your skin on a canvas with your computer resolution, like for me I always do my skins on 1024x768 canvas, makes cropping all these patterns stuff easier and gives you a visual overview of how your skin will look like on your browser. Too big/small/left/right/top/down?).
When your get all your info (15x1024) select the Rectangular marquee tool and under the menu choose Fixed Size and enter in the details respectively. Select the area at the top most part of your skin. This is very important because you can't select anyway you want it or else your pattern will screw up bad. After selecting crop it out and then save it.
If you have the column, and the background is a solid colour:
Easy peasy. Steps exactly like above one, but replace height with 1px.
Hope this helps you, Adeline!