Backgrounds are so called for a reason. They’re meant to support and complement instead of attract and distract. This week’s featured sites, however, provide a whole other level of interactivity and usefulness to backgrounds. You decide if they’re a good idea or not. Either way, they’re interesting concepts that can only be executed on the Web, so, enjoy!

The W3C has worked hard to remove presentational elements from HTML. Unfortunately, old habits don’t die easily. This has resulted in some standard generic CSS classes that are contradictory to the intention of HTML and CSS. If you are using classes like .left, .right, and .clear you are guilty as charged.