Browser Safe Colors

still using them?

[Newnewbie]

I've noticed more and more websites are using "non browser safe colors". For example take a look at:<snipped url - tedster> The background colors of the tables are a beautiful shade of blue, but certainly NOT web safe!

I would like to use more colors in my sites, but I do not feel confident that they will render well...

What are most people doing?

(edited by: tedster at 9:12 pm (gmt) on Nov. 5, 2001)

[tedster]

The most recent numbers I've seen show < 20% of users at 256 colors. So I figure it's time to give the majority a fuller treatment. They've paid for it!

So, I design at 16-bit color, and then view it at 256 just it make sure the color snap isn't hideous or embarrasing in some way.

[Newnewbie]

Wow! I just tried that. Everything looks real grainy and the colors have different tones. Is that what you are talking about?

Is there a 16-bit "web safe" color chart anywhere??

[tedster]

That graininess is browser dithering. It does look worse on some colors than others, especially the more they get towards "half way" between two websafe colors.

For instance, two web-safe colors are #666666 and #669966. On a guess, #667066 will probably not look TOO bad, but #668a66 probably will have the measles. In addition, you can often set a browser not to dither, so not everyone at 256 will see the spots anyway.

There's no exact science to this, and no chart that I know of. It depends on how the human eye works, more than anything, and it's a pretty subjective decision. Try looking at the page you mentioned in your first post at 256 colors and see what you think of the trade-off they chose.

As I said, on most sites I'm more interested in giving a rich experience to the 80% plus who can see it. This has paid good dividends for my clients, so I'm not about to change back. However, if I were doing a site that needed to look sharp to a very wide audience that included a lot of non-consumer computers, I would probably stick to websafe colors at present.

[bobriggs]

I'm very surprised at the 20% number given. If that's the case, then I'm sure a number of my sites look really crummy.

ASIDE: I visit a lot of business computers - they ask me what's the problem with their graphics - they're set for 256 colors - I ask why, you;ve got this great graphics card, and....256 is the largest number they see... :)

On top of that, you have to worry about AOL's botching really great graphics, even when the user has 16-24-32 bit color.

But a lot of times I find myself picking colors that are hex multiples of 3 a lot of times (0,3,6,9,c,f) - Just in case ;)

[SmallTime]

The number I saw recently was 4% of users at 256 - and other changes in monitors and operating systems make the browser safe notion obsolete - that is there is less chance of "safeness" today. Wish I could remember where I was browsing the subject. I think gamma differences are more likely a problem then number of colors.

[bobriggs]

If you're right, that makes me feel a little more comforatble...Somebody here will post a link to something that's most recent...

[tedster]

Yes, my stats were apparently very old. Here's something more up-to-date:
[w3schools.com...]

And the answer is 4% as of July 2001!