Web Design – Playing safe with Web-safe Colors
The web-world is made of millions of colors. We all have had the privilege to view some of most beautiful websites on the Internet. They consist of different colors and images. Each color has its own meaning. However, sometimes colors go wrong. The color may render differently on a browser and might change the whole theme. This is due to the abundance of different platforms around the world. A color that shows white on a Windows platform might appear to be yellow on a Macintosh browser.
Older browsers from the previous versions of operating systems could display only 256 colors at a time. This was because of the limitations in their RAM (Random Access Memory). The video and graphics memory available to these computers was small. Often it happened that browsers did not show the actual color but one similar to it. This is still a concern for web designers when designing websites full of colors. This is where web-safe color palettes come in use.
Web-safe color palette is a set of 216 basic colors that can display exactly same on all computers. These colors are solid, non-dithered and consistent. They are the numeric values in the RGB scale. They range in values from zero – 255 in multiples of 51. 0, 51, 102, 153, 204 and 255 are the numeric values of percentages 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100% respectively.
Most of the companies Like Website Design Company Delhi incorporate the two common web-safe palettes. They are Microsoft Internet Explorer Palette and the Netscape Web-safe Palette. A mathematical formula defines the colors in these palettes. For example, the value 255,0,0 denotes the color red whereas, 0,0,255 and 255,255,0 represent blue and yellow respectively. 0,0,0 stands for black while a 255,255,255 signifies white. These values provide an ease of usage when converted to hexadecimal numbers. They range from ffffff (White) to 000000 (Black). All other colors lie between these hex values.
The first set of two digits in the hexadecimal code stands for red while the second and the third sets stand for green and blue respectively. Most of the web browsers and other applications supported only the hex values until recently. Now they also support RGB values but are less preferred as compared to the hex values.
The hexadecimal value for red is ff0000. Similarly, 0000ff and ffff00 denote blue and yellow correspondingly. HTML and CSS specifications have defined names for 147 colors amongst the colors in the web-safe palette. 17 of them are standard colors while 130 others are variants and combinations of those 17 colors. These standard colors are aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, grey, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and yellow.
The colors in the web-safe palette display exactly same in all computer platforms, be it Mac or Windows. A designer using web-safe colors does not worry about how they shall render. Therefore, it is always advisable to use them in your website.
Addictive Media is a leading SEO Company India.After making a mark with its unmatched designs & development strengths, the company is fast emerging as a prominent as well.