The Fixed Background Watermark

plugins and media 1996 dead

One Internet Explorer attribute that stopped the tiled background scrolling with the page.

In 2026: Dead as an attribute, but the effect became CSS background-attachment: fixed, which works everywhere. Netscape users just got a scrolling tile, and mostly nobody noticed.

Where it came from: Microsoft Internet Explorer 2 HTML extensions, 1996. MDN ↗

<!-- IE only: the tile stays put while the text scrolls over it -->
<body bgproperties="fixed" bgcolor="#000000"
      background="https://xbawx.com/btn/assets/d3/d3ae4d9ccdfb98981c463eb3945df5ff2748d551.gif">

<!-- The 2026 version, in every browser -->
<style>
body {
  background-image: url(https://xbawx.com/btn/assets/d3/d3ae4d9ccdfb98981c463eb3945df5ff2748d551.gif);
  background-attachment: fixed;
  background-color: #000;
}
</style>

sandboxed demo · breaks nothing but itselfrestart

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