I use Netscape and do some HTML coding. I've put an image as background in a cell although I don't have any at the moment. However I use a background colour in a cell all the time to give a 'framed' feel without resorting to frames. Take a look at The Rick Fielding site which I designed. Each page is essentially a two celled table with the background colour defined for each cell. You can view the page source to see the code.
btw - I don't use any authoring tools. All HTML is done using NotePad or WordPad.