the web-safe color palette: do we still need it?
Not long after many of us started learning about publishing on the Web (many internet eons ago) somebody told us about the "web-safe color palette". This is the 216 colors that we were restricted to in order to make our pages compatible with all computers. But do we still need to use this restriction in the sites we design today?
The web-safe color palette had it's origin in the early days of the web (early 1990's) when
many computers were only capable of displaying 256 colors. Of those 256, only 216 were the same on both Macintosh and Windows computers. Many image editing and web design programs had this palette built in, including GoLive. Thus, if you wanted your pages to have the same color on as many computers as possible, you used those 216.
So, how many of the people visiting your site are using computers that can only display 256 colors? Most surveys I've read show there are very few, less than 5%. However, in schools we have another issue. In many classrooms we are still using software (KidPix 2, the early Living Books titles) that demands that the resolution of the computer be set to 256 colors. Some teachers don't bother to change the resolution back when they move to other programs or to use the web. I would bet that the same thing is happening in homes with young children using the same software.
The question still remains, then, how many visitors to your site have the resolution of their computers set to 256 colors? That is something you will have to answer for your particular situation. However, for most web designers, I think it's reasonable to say that the vast majority of your visitors are using computers that can display at least 65,000 colors (16 bit color in Windows, Thousands of Colors on the Mac).
In my opinion, it's time to drop the 216 color web-safe palette as a work around that is no longer necessary. The few visitors to your site, if any, will probably be noticing how rotten your photographs appear in 256 colors rather than how your shade of red in your header doesn't go with the teal color you've chosen.
Of course, having thousands or millions of colors to work with doesn't mean you should use them all in one site. One of your goals should be to not make your visitors physically ill. :-)
Now, if we just had more control over the fonts. Wait, we do! It's part of CSS.
