Is using Web safe colors still important? Are the statistics low enough on those not having a wider range of colors, that it isn't an issue anymore? Each time I pick a color 'off the chart' I feel like I'm cheating

Jayell

jayell,

Clearly the answer of this question is subjective. Personally, I have not minded the colors I use for quite some time. Any user still using a video display not capable of displaying colors not web-safe is by this time very familiar with the effect that will have on their web surfing experience as I believe most web sites no longer do so. Furthermore, photos and gradients would appear distorted and these are among the most widely used graphics on the web.

So for that justification and others notwithstanding, my answer is no, but I am sure there are other members who feel differently.

side note: Havn't posted here in a while, maybe i'll get back into the swing of things.

Jayell, I would also say no. More and more I find myself using Hex colours outside of the 255 "web safe" since your monitor has to be pretty old to have a negative effect. Although I would say use your discretion depending on your target audience. Even if by chance an older monitor can only see 255, it will still pick the closest "web safe" colour, which is not thaaaat bad

Thanks for the responses .. I've also seen the 4096 pallets,
http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html
which suggest Web 'Smart' colors vs Websafe .. vs 'unsafe.' More to think about

Jayell

Hey that's cool Jayell, thx for that link, I'll be using it lots!
Here's on I use often when putting together a colour scheme on the fly
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

Yes, Color Schemer is great because you can step the entire color scheme to light or darker. Here's a couple more just for fun that I picked up on another forum.

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/
Takes ANY two colors and blends them together for a third color .. interesting.

http://www.colormatch.dk/
This is also sort of an interesting of finding different shades and combinations (does NOT work in Mozilla)

http://www.behr.com/behrx/workbook/index.jsp
This is meant for finding complementary colors when you paint your house, but fun to experiment with .. and just as useful for Web design.

Isn't it amazing all the info out there

Jayell

I don't use web-safe colours in my designs anymore. I think the percentage of users using monitors that old is fairly small and not really worth worrying about. The same goes for old browsers like NS4, IE4 and the likes

I typically use websafe colors for links and background colors, but I do not stick to them strictly. Here's the latest breakdown from one of the sites I did (not my own). There are quite a few still using IE5, and probably only one person using NS4...but for the most part, people are using modern browsers.

MSIE	 	                71598	83.2 %	 
	Msie 6.0	No	68597	79.8 %	
	Msie 5.5	No	1177	1.3 %	
	Msie 5.23	No	462	0.5 %	
	Msie 5.22	No	256	0.2 %	
	Msie 5.16	No	257	0.2 %	
	Msie 5.15	No	41	0 %	
	Msie 5.14	No	37	0 %	
	Msie 5.01	No	280	0.3 %	
	Msie 5.0	No	491	0.5 %	

NETSCAPE	 	        2299	2.6 %	 
	Netscape 7.2	No	1371	1.5 %	
	Netscape 7.1	No	695	0.8 %	
	Netscape 7.01	No	3	0 %	
	Netscape 6.2.2	No	189	0.2 %	
	Netscape 6.2.1	No	38	0 %	
	Netscape 4.04	No	3	0 %	

OTHERS	 	        12058	14 %	 
	Safari	No	4566	5.3 %	
	Mozilla	No	4329	5 %	
	FireFox	No	2762	3.2 %	
	Unknown	?	342	0.3 %	
	Konq    No	58	0 %