No problem spl...

I'm not really "up" on all the PS6 books out, sorry. Perhaps go to Amazon.com and read some reviews of various books.

It makes no difference at all what your BG colour is, just use it for the Matte of your gif. If you're using an image for the page BG or a pattern, then use the median colour value -- open the bg image/pattern into Photoshop and blur it 32 pixels. Then use the eye dropper set to single pixel and find out what the rgb values are, then use that for the Matte.

This is not an exact science though... the colour & complexity of the BG image/pattern will usually dictate how you decide on the Matte colour.

If you know where abouts the gif image will be sitting/placed upon the BG image/pattern (in the Web page), then set it up like that in PS. Create an Alpha Channel of the main image to be the Gif, and save the image out. Now you can use the Alpha Channel to dictate the transparency in your gif.

Oh, and i think i forgot to mention this before... but avoid using the PNG format too much, or at all at this time. It is not fully supported by all browsers and their multiple versions yet. You could end up with visitors that will only see the textual content on your page, and no images.

"The lessons to be learned, are found along the path of your journey, not at your final destination. That is only where you will rest, between lessons"