[compbry15]

Hello All,

This post could probably fit into Web Standards, Graphics Design, or the current section, but here goes.

I am new to web design and trying to decide on the colors for my website. I was doing some reading and noticed that for a long time, web designers were limited to 216 web-safe colors that displayed identically on all systems. However I was having a hard time finding anything up-to-date (i.e. most of these were from early 2000).

One of the big things in Web 2.0 seems to be bold, vibrant colors. On top of that, many (most?) modern Web 2.0 websites seem to finally break away from that 216 color limitation. This is just from my own observation, seeing lots of gradients, and colors that don't "seem" to be on that palette of 216.

So, my question is, is this limitation old news? Do different (updated of course) browsers and operating systems display a much wider range of colors in a reasonable sense? Am I safe in choosing a nice, bold color scheme that doesn't necessarily match that 216 color palette?

Thanks for the tips

[steveb]

It's very old news. It comes from the dayes of olde when computer monitors could display all of 16 basic colours. (About 1985).

For at least the past 20 years, monitors have been able to display 16.3 million colours. So we are told - the human eye can distinguish about three million, so you'll never know for sure if you're being hoodwinked.

Go right ahead and use any colours you want. Just make sure your colour scheme is beautiful and suitable!

[microdesign]

Be aware of the fact that some colors can look realy different on mutliple screens.
for instance, you have different shades of yellow which in some cases is more orange then others where it can be almost white. be sure to use a bit safe colors and check it on multiple screens if u really want to be sure it looks fine.

for inspiration of colours check kulur.com and colorlovers.com

good luck

[seen.to]

Computers were still coming configured with 256 colors as recently as 1997 (or thereabouts -- based on memory rather than research). The web-safe pallette was based on the 216 colors that were common across PC and Mac (as the other 40 were not).

Last time I designed a site in web-safe colors was 1998 but I kept checking with my PC in 256 until some time in 1999/2000.

If I remember correctly Windows 95 first installed with a default 256 colors (16 in safe mode), Windows 98 was the first to default to 16bit.

Anyways, it's certainly old news and -- apart from for historical reasons -- not something you need to worry about any more. You'll struggle to even find a mobile phone with as few as 216 colors these days.