Am a keen follower of Microsoft's SharePoint Blog and proud to provide this direct from the Microsoft Tech Community:

 

We are excited to share that we’re updating the section background feature in SharePoint Pages and News. With this feature, we’re enabling authors to create beautiful pages with featured sections.

 

SharePoint now lets you add an image or gradient color to the page sections from a new set of options. And lets you personalize the sections backgrounds with your own images.

 

A see-through overlay has been automatically added to make the text easier to read when you set an image or gradient color as section background.

 

We’ve added more settings like Fill mode, Overlay color, Overlay opacity to help you do more customization, and follow accessibility best practices and ensure that the.

 

Tip! How to create a smooth border between two sections in View mode: For the upper section (sky), choose Dark Gradient Overlay – Bottom to top – Set Opacity to 100; For the lower section (lake), pick Dark Gradient Overlay – Top to bottom – Set Opacity to 100.

 

 

We’ve enhanced the focal point setting experience. You will be able to set it when Fill mode of background is “Scale to fill”.

 

New experience to preview to see how the focal point affects the way your readers view your image across different screen sizes and aspect ratios.

 

 

Features and capabilities, mentioned in this blog post, are demonstrated in the following video with Yi Han (Microsoft) & Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft)

 

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

The first version of Section background (16 background options) is in 100% production already. of v1.1 will roll out to Targeted Release customers starting May 2024, and to all customers by the end of June.

 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 378647 and Roadmap ID 378648.

 

How will this affect your organization?

With this update, SharePoint Page and News authors can set section background color or image to make it an appealing experience.

 

What do you need to prepare?

There is nothing you need to do to prepare, but you can let your users know about this new experience and guide them to make beautiful pages with a few examples.

 

How does it look in emails?

Site theme colors will be used in place of section backgrounds that aren’t supported in email when you send a news post or a page as an email.

 

What is next?

Here’s a short list of the following roadmap items in our plans which were also discussed in the associated video discussion.

 

• We are planning to support animated images as background in the next release.


• We are considering adding an opt-out for this feature to turn it off on the site or tenant level.

 

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Thanks for reading. Please enjoy making beautiful pages and let us know any feedback or questions in the comments.

 

The above is kindly provided by the Microsoft Tech Community!