>>to maintain your background colors, you need to have <body> still in your privmsg, as well as my additional one.
Or at the bottom of privmsg put
Code:
<script language="javascript">
<!--
document.forms.vbform.message.focus();
-->
</script>
Which is basically the same thing as onLoad since it's at the bottom of the page (assuming you're not loading iFrames or other including bits).