Web Safe Colors
When I first started learning about web design I came across a color chart of web safe colors. These were the colors (at that time) that all browsers would render the same. It was a pretty simple chart and the formula was easy enough to remember. It allowed for 216 different colors that were referred to as "Non-Dithering Colors". I still have the "RGB Hex Triplet Color Chart" on my computer to this day... nearly 6 years later.
So what is a Hex Triplet color... non-dithering color anyway? Well it's really pretty simple. As I said before it's a color that all browsers at that time rendered the same. You would use a six digit hexadecimal value to represent a color. The hex number was used for tag attributes like color and bgcolor and was in the form #RRGGBB. RR was the two digit hex value for the amount of red in the color. GG was for green and BB was for blue. So the color blue would be represented as #0000ff.
The Hex Triplet Color Chart showed all the values that were rendered the same across all browsers. The hex values for the red, green and blue were 00, 33, 66, 99, CC and FF. You could safely use these values for red, green and blue and you'd have the 216 colors that would look exactly the same on all browsers.
If you didn't use the hex values but instead used the rgb values it was the same thing you just needed to
convert the hex values to a decimal value. So...
Hex = Decimal
00 = 0
33 = 51
66 = 102
99 = 153
CC = 204
FF = 255
If you used #3399FF for your hex value then you would use rgb(51,153,255) for the same color in rgb(x,y,z)
format.
Web browsers have come a long way since I first learned web design/development. But we have to be aware that the problem with a color like #34cf8a being rendered differently wasn't only because of the browsers being used. It also was the result of the computers color settings. If the color setting were too low then the colors being displayed wouldn't be how we, as designers, expected them to be. So while we may feel that the browsers are up to standards we can never be too sure on the personal setting of the computers people are using. Web safe colors may still have a place in the world.
Web Safe Color Chart
Below is an image that shows the web safe colors as well as their hex values. Feel free to save the image
to use if you feel it is helpful.
