| The color that you see on a web page is affected by the quality and
settings of your computer's monitor.
Web page color is screen-based. The monitor screen displays combinations of the red, green, and blue values of the color spectrum. The value of a color is an amount of contrast, i.e., its lightness or darkness. This value can be expressed in a number from 0-255. |
| Browsers read the hexadecimal (i.e., base 16) equivalents
of color values.
HTML expresses color in the format #rrggbb where rrggbb refers to the hex equivalents of the color’s red (rr), green(gg), and blue(bb) values. Example.: #ffffff is the HTML code for the hex equivalent of the color white. |
| The overwhelming majority (99%) of computer monitors in use today are capable of displaying so-called "True Color" or a range of 16 million colors. Thus, web developers no longer feel the necessity of limiting their color choices to the 216 colors (the browser-safe palette) that can be displayed on the older 8-bit monitors.
However, if you do want to restrict yourself to the colors that will be displayed accurately in even the oldest monitors, use browser-safe colors; that is, any colors that are formed with any combination of the color values with the hex equivalents of 00, 33, 66, 99, cc, ff. |
You can change the colors of every element of your web
page; thus you can change:
|
| When you change your colors, be sure there is sufficient
contrast between your text color and your background color.
Use pastels rather than bold colors until you become proficient in web design. For example, light text on a dark background is very startling and vivid, but difficult to read in long passages and virtually impossible to print. |
| • Key Concepts • Change Color on a Page • |
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