216 colors that don’t REALLY matter any more

This table is now only good for a quick lookup of colors. For a few short years it was known as the WebSafe 216 colors. These were the colors that you were suposed to use on your website in order to GUARANTEE that your site would look exactly the same on every computer and with every browser out there. These colors were invented when everybody was only using 256 color monitors. And most monitors and video cards did not allow you to adjust the RGB values. Now however, because no one surfs in 256 color mode any more and everyones monitor contrast is set differently anyway, this color scheme is relatively useles as far as websites are concerned. That said, people STILL try to promote its use and if you are reading this article, now archived, someone probably told you the same thing.

Don’t listen. Make your site plain and simple. If you are using colors that MUST be displayed exactly right for your text to be readable, then you are doing something wrong. Contrast, to a certain extent, is a good thing.

Others, like me, might just want to look up some colors in HEX because you don’t know their official web color names. That’s why this has got a spot in the code cave. If I need a number, I follow the link at the end of this post…

BTW Color names are a myth too. I know there’s a wonderful page out there that has all sorts of colors that work in IE and some other browsers, Colors like “Dark Orange” or “Silver dew on yellow marigolds”, but that’s all a myth too. There are only 16 official web color names. Anything else is added on by the browser’s developers and who knows what color you’ll get if Use hex instead of any color name that is not: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, or yellow.

The 216 Web safe pallete color lookup table can be found here.

Now, go add some color to your life!