Websafe Colours

The "Websafe" palette is a bit controversial. It is a set of 216 colours that are, supposedly, guaranteed to appear as intended on all graphical displays when used in HTML, CSS, and images embedded in Web pages. Many Web developers believe that sticking to these colours is one of the holiest commandments in the Web design scripture.

This was mostly a concern when most computers had 8-bit colour displays; these days, most people run at 16-bit or 24-bit colour. Although these bit-depths render the Websafe palette pointless, dithering and quantization bugs in browsers and operating systems still cause problems in 16-bit displays (16-bit display, also known as "High Colour" mode or "Thousands of Colours", is generally problematic). Extensive testing has led to a new palette, called "Reallysafe", where colours are guaranteed to appear correctly on all displays and all browsers. As the Reallysafe creators say, I hope you like green.

If you use different colours than these, you might see images and backgrounds of the same colour appear at a slightly different tint, so that a 'box' will be visible around them if the background extends beyond the image's edges.