When specifying colors for HTML page backgrounds, fonts, and other elements for 256-color displays, it is wise to choose from the 216 colors that look identical on both PC and Mac operating systems. Both the Netscape (Navigator and Communicator) and Microsoft (Internet Explorer) browsers have to work without the colors that each operating system reserves for itself. Since there are a total of 40 reserved colors on both systems, that leaves 216 colors for you to use. If you use one of the 40 colors, each system tries to approximate it with some combination of the 216 acceptable colors, called dithering. Unfortunately, each operating system does dithering a bit differently. The result on a browser on one or both of the operating systems is likely to be not what you intended.
By using only the colors in the "browser-safe palette" table located at http://www.eons.com/216color.htm , you can be certain that your colors will look the same on both operating systems, in both browsers. The table shows both the hexadecimal and RGB value that you need to specify in the <BODY> tag for backgrounds and in the <FONT> and other tags containing color attributes.
Hi John, Jeffrey,
I paid little attention to this palette when designing the What Next? http://what-next.com site and have recently recieved a message from a visitor complaining that on his system, the orange looked red and made it hard to read with the blue as they are atn opposite end of the spectrum. This just shows the importance of this palette.
JP
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Kindest Regards, JP Stones
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The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Site http://www.what-next.com - Winner of 20+ Awards
The NEXT step in Designing and Promoting your Website
JP Stones posted this at 17:26 — 31st January 1999.
Jeff,
I was just curious about the pallete. Do all browsers dither to the closest colour or do some just - only - use these 256 colours not do any dithering?
JP
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Jeffrey Ellison posted this at 04:04 — 29th January 1999.
They have: 62 posts
Joined: Dec 1998
When specifying colors for HTML page backgrounds, fonts, and other elements for 256-color displays, it is wise to choose from the 216 colors that look identical on both PC and Mac operating systems. Both the Netscape (Navigator and Communicator) and Microsoft (Internet Explorer) browsers have to work without the colors that each operating system reserves for itself. Since there are a total of 40 reserved colors on both systems, that leaves 216 colors for you to use. If you use one of the 40 colors, each system tries to approximate it with some combination of the 216 acceptable colors, called dithering. Unfortunately, each operating system does dithering a bit differently. The result on a browser on one or both of the operating systems is likely to be not what you intended.
By using only the colors in the "browser-safe palette" table located at http://www.eons.com/216color.htm , you can be certain that your colors will look the same on both operating systems, in both browsers. The table shows both the hexadecimal and RGB value that you need to specify in the <BODY> tag for backgrounds and in the <FONT> and other tags containing color attributes.
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Jeffrey Ellison
[email protected]
www.eons.com - Free Online Tools for Webmasters
John Sutton posted this at 18:10 — 29th January 1999.
They have: 16 posts
Joined: Dec 1998
Jeffrey,
I visited your web site...WOW
I wish I had discovered these tools a long time ago. I bookmarked your site, I'll be surfin' by often. Thanks!
John
JP Stones posted this at 21:55 — 29th January 1999.
They have: 2,390 posts
Joined: Nov 1998
Hi John, Jeffrey,
I paid little attention to this palette when designing the What Next? http://what-next.com site and have recently recieved a message from a visitor complaining that on his system, the orange looked red and made it hard to read with the blue as they are atn opposite end of the spectrum. This just shows the importance of this palette.
JP
------------------
Kindest Regards, JP Stones
.
The Webmaster Promotion and Resource Site
http://www.what-next.com - Winner of 20+ Awards
The NEXT step in Designing and Promoting your Website
JP Stones posted this at 17:26 — 31st January 1999.
They have: 2,390 posts
Joined: Nov 1998
Jeff,
I was just curious about the pallete. Do all browsers dither to the closest colour or do some just - only - use these 256 colours not do any dithering?
JP
ukcraig posted this at 22:58 — 10th April 2010.
They have: 52 posts
Joined: Nov 1998
Jeffrey,
I tried to take a look @ the colour safe guide on your site, but in Nutscrape the page comes up totally blank
The rest of your site looks good though, and I too have bookmarked it for later reference.
Jeffrey Ellison posted this at 01:14 — 8th February 1999.
They have: 62 posts
Joined: Dec 1998
Craig,
Thanks for making me aware of the page problem in Netscape. I spent my morning fixing this and you'll now be able to see both http://www.eons.com/216color.htm and http://www.eons.com/136color.htm correctly in Netscape 2.x and higher and IE 3.x and higher.
------------------
Jeffrey Ellison
[email protected]
http://www.eons.com - Free Online Tools for Webmasters
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