Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [19]
4. (Optional) If you want your image to tile, click the Tile Background option.
5. If you want only to change your image, click Save.
6. (Optional) To customize your text and links, click the Change Design Colors link.
You may want to make your Twitter page match the color scheme of your blog or Web site. If you can access the hexadecimal codes on your blog’s color scheme, you can enter those same hexadecimal codes in the appropriate boxes. After you finish, click Save Changes to update your colors. If you mess up before you save your changes, you can always hit Cancel or navigate away to retain your current color settings.
Hexadecimal codes are the six-digit codes used in Web site design to assign colors; each combination of numbers and letters corresponds to a different shade. For example, 000000 is black, and FFFFFF is white. Plenty of places on the Web offer easy-to-understand guides to hexadecimal color codes. Check out Adobe’s Kuler (http://kuler.adobe.com) if you’re looking for a nice color palette.
7. Click each of the color swatch squares that you want to change.
A note above each square tells you what part of the text or design is affected.
8. When you’re happy with your color scheme, click Save.
If you’re using Twitter for business purposes, use your background to reflect your company’s identity — tiling your logo as the background, for example. Figure 2-7 shows an example of JetBlue’s Twitter background.
Figure 2-7: A customized corporate background.
Editing photos for your Twitter avatar
Many of the photos that you want to use for your Twitter avatar may include other people. Or the picture composition may not allow you to get a good head shot. Thankfully, both Macs and PCs have tools available so that you can quickly put together an avatar without needing third-party photo-editing software. As an added bonus, these tricks show you how to take screenshots (pictures of what appears on your screen).
Start by finding a picture on your hard drive, the Web, or your digital camera and open the picture.
If you use Mac OS X, follow these steps:
1. With the picture file open and visible on the screen, press Ô+Shift+4.
Your cursor changes into a crosshair.
2. Click and drag your cursor over the area that you want to include in your profile picture, and then let go.
On your desktop, a new file (usually titled something such as Picture 1) appears, ready for uploading.
On a Windows computer, follow these steps:
1. With the picture file open and visible on the screen, press the Print Screen button on your keyboard.
This button may read PRNTSCR or a similar abbreviation.
2. Press Windows+R.
The Run dialog box appears.
3. Type mspaint at the prompt and click OK.
MSPaint opens.
4. Press Ctrl+V.
A screenshot is pasted into MSPaint. By default, the Move tool in Paint is selected.
5. Drag the screen shot up and to the left to mark the upper-left corner of the picture you want as your avatar.
6. Click outside the selection rectangle to deselect the screenshot.
7. Scroll to the bottom-right corner of the image.
A small, dark blue box appears directly outside the bottom-right of the image.
8. Click and drag that tiny blue box toward the upper-left.
Stop where you want to mark the bottom-right corner of the image.
9. Choose File⇒Save As.
The Save As dialog box appears.
10. Save the file as a .jpg, .gif, or .png, give it an appropriate name (such as twitteravatar), and save it in a place where you can find it later.
You’re ready to go!
If the default themes or images don’t appeal to you, or if you’re looking for something simpler or more casual, you can find free background images at sites such as TwitterPatterns (www.twitterpatterns.com). TwitterPatterns offers a variety of pattern graphics to choose from, all of which are sized specifically to fit Twitter profiles. If