Additional Information

• Main Reference from W3C.
• The Color Cube from Creating Killer Web Sites is a gif file with all 216 Netscape colors. Included are instructions on how to load this palette into Photoshop 4.0.
• Dougie's Color Picker allows you to try non-dithering colors which you pick from a palette. (This requires Java Script to work properly.)
• Victor Engel describes the Netscape Color Safe Palette and provides both Java script (won't work in IE 3.02) and non-Java based image maps to aid in color selection.
• Tim Folker provides 2 tables of HTML Color Names sorted by HTML version (2.0 and 3.0), and provides an interesting table showing text (of vaious colors) on the background color of your choice. This is accomplished using Java script similar to
        <A HREF="compare.html" onmouseover="document.bgColor='ALICEBLUE'">...</A>
• Colormix provides an excellent way to dither colors (mix 2 or 3 colors to simulate another) using the "Net Safe" color palettet. Your system needs to be able to show 24-bit colors, but the dithered results can be displayed on systems with only 256 colors. The results are quite amazing.
• Though there is nothing free here, I've included this link because Pantone defines standard colors (pre-mixed inks) for print media. Their Web Developer's Catalog advertises several products which simplify using their colors on your site. However, I question the utility of this because each monitor renders colors with slight (or sometimes with significant) differences.
• Death of the Websafe Color Palette? provides an excellent description of what "web safe" colors are and why they are (were) needed. Based on experimental results, there are, in fact, only 22 truely "web safe" colors, not the 216 that are generally advertised.

  I disagree with their statement that colors in the 15-bit pallette do not map to any color in the 24-bit pallette. It is my understanding that they all map exactly. This difference is based on their assumption that the maximum value assigned to each 15-bit color gives the same brightness as the maximum value in 24-bit mode. If true, this correlation is implemented on specific video cards. It is not logical to assume that all video cards would implement the same algorithm.

URL: http:// cpcug.org / user / clemenzi / technical / HTML_Examples / Colors.htm