by Parker Torrence
Color and the Internet, is perhaps one of the most confusing areas of web design. It is made even more confusing by the inconsistency of information. Two of my first books on web crafting were “HTML Quick Reference” by Robert Mullen, and “JavaScript Quick Reference” by Rick Darnell. Both published in 1996 by QUE Corporation. Within these two books I learned that:
| color according to | Robert Mullen | Rick Darnell |
|---|---|---|
Corn Flower Blue |
#42426F |
#6495ED |
Dark Orchid |
#9932CD |
#9932CC |
Gold |
#CD7F32 |
#FFD700 |
Midnight Blue |
#2F2F4F |
#191970 |
Sienna |
#BE6B23 |
#A0522D |
Okay, I learned that they did not always agree.
In this same time frame Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin were writing “Coloring Web Graphics” and the Internet was introduced to the 216 Browser-Safe Color palette. You could almost say it was the first web standard, becoming know as “Websafe colors.”
The concept was simple, RGB (Red Green Blue) notation written in Hexadecimal format could have the following values: #00, #33, #66, #99, #CC or #FF. This created a 6-by-6-by-6 color cube, or 216 colors. What this meant to the web designer at the time was that between the various browsers and operating platforms, the probability was high that the viewer would see something close to the color you wanted.
Here is our example colors with some Websafe values added:
| color as per | Robert Mullen | Rick Darnell | Websafe |
|---|---|---|---|
Corn Flower Blue |
#42426F |
#6495ED |
#6699FF |
Dark Orchid |
#9932CD |
#9932CC |
#9933CC |
Gold |
#CD7F32 |
#FFD700 |
#CC9933 |
Midnight Blue |
#2F2F4F |
#191970 |
#000066 |
Sienna |
#BE6B23 |
#A0522D |
#996633 |
Maybe not the greatest matches, but they were Websafe! This worked fine on 8-bit monitors with their limited 256 color displays.
Technology marches on, now many monitors commonly display 16-bit, 24-bit or even 36-bit color. The effect this had was explored in detail in Death of the Websafe Color Palette? by David Lehn and Hadley Stern (September 6, 2000). To summarize, out of the 216 Websafe colors, only 22 were still truely “web safe.”
A new color paradigm was needed. On February 19, 2001 MacEdition published CodeBitch wants a bigger box of crayons and a new color paradigm was presented.
Instead of religiously adhearing to an outmoded concept, and at the sametime not tossing the baby out with the bathwater. The “old” Websafe palette of 216 colors was expanded from a 6-by-6-by-6 cube to a 16-by-16-by-16 cube. If before we could use the Hexadecimal values of #00, #33, #66, #99, #CC and #FF, why not expand the palette to all of the double numbers? This gives us #00, #11, #22, #33, #44, #55, #66, #77, #88, #99, #AA, #BB, #CC, #DD, #EE and #FF, for a total of 4096 possible colors. Granted, not all of them will work great, but unless you plan to design in 22 “safe” colors (most in the range of slime green) it is better then no paradigm at all.
Our example with Web-Smart colors added.
| color as per | Robert Mullen | Rick Darnell | Websafe | Web-Smart |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Corn Flower Blue |
#42426F |
#6495ED |
#6699FF |
#6699EE |
Dark Orchid |
#9932CD |
#9932CC |
#9933CC |
#9933CC |
Gold |
#CD7F32 |
#FFD700 |
#CC9933 |
#CCAA22 |
Midnight Blue |
#2F2F4F |
#191970 |
#000066 |
#222244 |
Sienna |
#BE6B23 |
#A0522D |
#996633 |
#BB6622 |
Just for fun and to satisfy my own curiosity, I created a “Web-Smart Color Cube” (the cube does not contain all of the colors). Values are listed using the title atribute of the image tage, viewable using IE5 or newer browser. Values are given in the W3C's CCS three-digit short version of the color directive, #35F = #3355FF.
Web-Smart Color Cube
To view the full spectrum of the “Web-Smart” palette visit moreCrayons.