Web-safe colours

Colour monitors can be set to show as few as 256 colours or up to millions of colours.

Some general guidelines for use of colour on the web are:

• Select colours from the web-safe palette.
• Use colours with a strong contrast so that different elements are easy to see.
• Use black text on a white background when large quantities of text are being presented. This is the easiest colour combination to read.
• View your pages on different computer monitors because the colours may be displayed differently.

References

• The browser-safe web palette
  http://www.lynda.com/hexh.html
  Using the 216 web-safe colour palette ensures that most computers will display colours correctly.
• access to colour palettes:
• Visibone — Webmaster's Color Labratory
  http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/big.html
  Click on colour wheel to view hex HTML and decimal RGB codes.
• Dougie's Color Picker
  http://www.hypersolutions.org/pages/colorSel.html
  Select text, link and background colours and view your colour schemes.
• Paletteman
  http://www.wire-man.com/paletteman/
  Select complementary colour schemes.
• Visicheck - Web Palette Color Distinction Test
  http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/colortest.html
  Checks colours for contrast so that people with colour blindness can distinguish different elements on the page.