| What are web safe colors?
Web safe colors,simply put, are colors that are recognized and viewable on all computer systems. You see, in the not so distant past, many computers could only display 256 colors. In effect using web safe colors makes no difference unless the user's computer is limited to 256 colors, although the effects are not disastrous and they don't crash the computer, using colors outside the web-safe palette can have a variety of drawbacks on 256-color computers:
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Sometimes there's no effect at all, the color looks right.
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Often there's a speckled compromise of nearby colors called "dithering". This is especially true of large flat featureless areas.
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Sometimes nonstandard colors are replaced by radically different colors (gray).
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There may also be an increase in what you may call color thrash, where a window's colors change nonsensically like bad pop art (red white and blue becoming pink purple and puce). This is jarring and annoying when switching from one application to another.
Antique computers remain in service that can only display 256 colors at a time. Many are hand-me-downs at the bottom of the office food chain. But not all 256-color users are on old computers. Some game programs insist on reconfiguring to 256-color mode, perhaps so they can animate faster. I heard of one designer running into 256-color mode on an important client’s laptop when he was trying to show off his work. A very competent developer I knew switches to 256 color mode whenever he gets a new computer so he can trade off for higher resolution, or what he swears is faster operation.
Whether or not to use web safe colors is ultimately your decision. I only advise it to ensure a quality viewing experience for all your site's visitors. Even if you don't decide to use web safe colors these charts can be a good place to start in choosing colors, using the pallette as a reference guide.
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