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Web-safe colors today
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| Anjali 2004-03-30, 8:41 pm |
| Hi,
I am creating a new site wherein I am defining certain styles using
non-web-safe colors. Restricting to web-safe colors seems like quite a
compromise with the look of the site.
At the same time, my understanding is that 90 % of users today will
have machines capable of displaying 16 & 32 bit colors. And even if
they do not & there is a certain amount of distortion of color, I
believe I can accept that.
Any inputs either way about what the approach should be.
Thanks.
-Anjali
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| darrel 2004-03-30, 8:42 pm |
| > Any inputs either way about what the approach should be.
Web safe colors aren't a huge deal these days. Worse case scenario, a person
just sees slightly distorted colors.
-Darrel
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| Linda Rathgeber - TMM 2004-03-30, 8:42 pm |
| This is probably a lot more than you want to know, but it's fun to write
about.
Web Safe doesn't mean that anyone using any browser on any Operating
System will see those colors in the same way. It means they won't see
them as dithered.
The Web safe palette was developed for 256 color video display. 8-bit
and 16-bit (High color) color systems share only 8 colors of the Web 216
palette. That means the Web 216 color palette is guaranteed to dither or
shift in a 16-bit color display.
High color was originally developed for artists who work in CMYK color
space. 16 bits can be evenly divided into 4 bits per channel—4 Cyan, 4
Magenta, 4 Yellow, and 4 Key (blacK). RGB is a three value color space.
16 bits can't be evenly divided by 3, so you end up with an extra color
bit. That extra color bit is what causes things go wonky.
Different display card manufacturers have different ways of dealing with
that 16th bit. One may assign the orphaned bit to the blue channel,
making a color look cooler. Another manufacturer may assign bit #16 to
the red channel, making the same color look warmer. A third display card
manufacturer might choose to ignore bit 16 altogether. This color shift
between systems is why the background color of a GIF matches the
background color of an HTML page on my system but doesn't match it on
yours. It's worth noting that LCD screens are less color faithful than
CRT monitors, especially when viewing the screen a bit off the
perpendicular. 16-bit color display is a complete madhouse!
What does all of this mean? 256 color systems are rare these days so we
don't need to limit ourselves to the Web 216 colors anymore. We do need
to be careful about the way we put colors next to each other, though.
Use the colors you like, but check the results on as many diverse
systems as you can lay your hands on.
--
Cheers,
Linda Rathgeber
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