HTML safe colors

[Zamdrist]

Been awhile since I've done any significant html work. Was wondering
if I need to worry at all about colors and using html safe colors? I
can't imagine too many people browsing the web anymore at 256 colors.

Thanks,

Steve

[David E. Ross]

Zamdrist wrote:

Been awhile since I've done any significant html work. Was wondering
if I need to worry at all about colors and using html safe colors? I
can't imagine too many people browsing the web anymore at 256 colors.

Thanks,

Steve

W3Schools reports color usage at
<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp>, about
half-way down the page. Note, however, that their audience is
somewhat specialized and does not reflect the general world.

Still, their comment about hand-held devices is important; there is
a growing audience who use cell phones to surf the Web. Although
not noted regarding screen resolution (the earlier tabulation on
the same page), resolution for hand-held devices should also be
considered.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask
"Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such
Thing as Fast Enough?"
<http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit David E. Ross:

Zamdrist wrote:

>Been awhile since I've done any significant html work. Was wondering
if I need to worry at all about colors and using html safe colors? I
can't imagine too many people browsing the web anymore at 256 colors.

- -

W3Schools reports color usage

It has been repeatedly said and demonstrated in this and other groups that
W3schools contains much rubbish, and it's unreliable as any kind of
reference.

Still, their comment about hand-held devices is important; there is
a growing audience who use cell phones to surf the Web.

That's irrelevant to the question about "HTML safe colors". If you use a
color that is not one of the colors supported by a display device, it will
be mapped to the nearest supported color. So what's the problem?

"Web-safe colors" were an issue years ago, relating to colors used in
_images_.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:23:55 GMT
Zamdrist scribed:

Been awhile since I've done any significant html work. Was wondering
if I need to worry at all about colors and using html safe colors? I
can't imagine too many people browsing the web anymore at 256 colors.

Nah. It really isn't an issue anymore if you don't try to get too
"aesthetic" with your choices.

--
Neredbojias
Half lies are worth twice as much as whole lies.

[David E. Ross]

On 7/20/2007 2:24 PM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote [in part]:

>
It has been repeatedly said and demonstrated in this and other groups that
W3schools contains much rubbish, and it's unreliable as any kind of
reference.

If you look at the trends reported by W3Schools and not the absolute
numbers, the statistics are supported by observations made by others.
It's unimportant whether IE's market share has dropped by 29.5% since
2003 (W3Schools) or 11.3% since 2005 (my own talley). It is important
that IE's share of the browser market has declined significantly.

As for color depth and display resolution, even if W3Schools' data is
off, there are still a number of users of 16-bit color (I use 32-bit
color) and 800x600 resolution (including me). Should we design our Web
pages only for 32-bit color and 1280x1024 resolution? I don't think so.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask
"Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such
Thing as Fast Enough?"
<http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:45:30 GMT
Jonathan N. Little scribed:

>Long, long ago with my nose press against a
whopping 14 incher the browser was set to max often!

I once had a girlfriend who said virtually the same thing.

--
Neredbojias
Half lies are worth twice as much as whole lies.

[Nikita the Spider]

In article <11**********************@n60g2000hse.googlegroups .com>,
Zamdrist <za******@gmail.comwrote:

Been awhile since I've done any significant html work. Was wondering
if I need to worry at all about colors and using html safe colors? I
can't imagine too many people browsing the web anymore at 256 colors.

Back in 2000 there was an excellent WebMonkey article that explored the
concept of Web-safe colors and IMO pretty thoroughly shot holes in it.
I'm happy to see that the article is back online. It concludes, "We
found that only 22 of the 216 colors we began with did not end up being
shifted incorrectly in at least one viewing environment. So, it looks
like we have roughly 22 colors that are really websafe...[H]ope you like
green..."

http://www.webmonkey.com/00/37/index2a.html

I'd say that despite the growth of user agents (e.g. mobile phones) that
are less capable than what we've grown to expect, there's not much point
in worry about Web safe colors.

--
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Whole-site HTML validation, link checking and more

[Steve Swift]

That's irrelevant to the question about "HTML safe colors". If you use a

color that is not one of the colors supported by a display device, it
will be mapped to the nearest supported color. So what's the problem?

The original problem was that if you used an "unsafe" colour some
combinations of browser/display adapter tried to display the colour by
using a dithering technique which resulted in some weird-looking
patterns appearing.

I would doubt that this is much of a problem any longer. Someone with a
256 colour display probably doesn't matter much anyway. :-)

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

[rf]

"Steve Swift" <St***********@gmail.comwrote in message
news:46******@news.greennet.net...

>That's irrelevant to the question about "HTML safe colors". If you use a
color that is not one of the colors supported by a display device, it
will be mapped to the nearest supported color. So what's the problem?

The original problem was that if you used an "unsafe" colour some
combinations of browser/display adapter tried to display the colour by
using a dithering technique which resulted in some weird-looking patterns
appearing.

Nope. The original problem was with images, at the time gifs. A gif has a
256 colour palette and if there are more than one of them on a page then the
different colours in each of their palettes would add up to more than the
256 colours that 8 bit colour cards could handle.

The first gif would display correctly as each of its colours (well most of
them, as there are only 240 colours available) would map into an empty
palette register. But each subsequent gif would be limited to those colours
that had already been loaded.

Paint a nice sunset in varying shades of red and pink, use up the palette,
your next gif of a blue and green ocean would be trashed.

The browsers did not do any dithering, ever. Nor did the hardware. It was
merely a lack of available colours in the palette. A hardware problem. I
wrote an article about this in the 90's. Must dig it up.

I would doubt that this is much of a problem any longer.

No, its no longer a problem. And, in fact it was and sometimes still is
detrimental. The "colour safe" colours do *not* map into a 16 bit colour
space. There was a while there when all sorts of artefacts appeared, image
background colours not matching with the page background and so on. I wonder
if some of these new telephones have 16 bit colour?

Someone with a 256 colour display probably doesn't matter much anyway.
:-)

And they are used to seeing green people :-)

--
Richard.

[Andy Dingley]

On 23 Jul, 11:43, "rf" <[e-mail]:

Nope. The original problem was with images, at the time gifs. A gif has a
256 colour palette

Although you make a reasonable point about GIFs also suffering, the
"web safe" palette wasn't aimed as a solution to this, nor did it
actually help much. Palette-based limits (like GIF) never cared what
the colours were, merely that you couldn't have too many different
entries in effect at the same time. The "web safe colour set" also
restricted the _choice_ of these colour entries, for reasons that were
tenuous and transient even back then.

[Sherm Pendley]

"rf" <[e-mail]:

No, its no longer a problem. And, in fact it was and sometimes still is
detrimental. The "colour safe" colours do *not* map into a 16 bit colour
space. There was a while there when all sorts of artefacts appeared, image
background colours not matching with the page background and so on. I wonder
if some of these new telephones have 16 bit colour?

Most cheap LCD displays have 18-bit color. They accept 24-bit color as input
and downconvert it.

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

[axlq]

In article <11**********************@n60g2000hse.googlegroups .com>,
Zamdrist <za******@gmail.comwrote:

>Been awhile since I've done any significant html work. Was wondering
if I need to worry at all about colors and using html safe colors? I
can't imagine too many people browsing the web anymore at 256 colors.

I do, when accessing a remote computer over a VNC connection. 256
colors consumes less bandwidth and the display updates faster.

-A

[Steve Swift]

The browsers did not do any dithering, ever. Nor did the hardware. It was

merely a lack of available colours in the palette. A hardware problem. I
wrote an article about this in the 90's. Must dig it up.

Ah, the 90's. I'm not into such newfangled stuff. I'm talking about an
era before there was Netscape. Windows 3.1 stuff. These dinosaurs
definitely dithered what should be a uniform background if you didn't
use the hallowed colours. How else would you render "peach" on hardware
that supported a generous 16 colours?

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk