Safe Colors
One of the great things about the Internet is the versatility between browsers and platforms in that most users can view just about any page, any time. One of the aspects of the user experience that is determined by the user (or the user's browser) is color. More specifically, the number of colors that are displayed on the computer screen. It is for this reason that there is a 216 color web "safe" palette that remains stable from one browser to another, between platforms, and at different monitor resolutions. The web safe palette is available to the left, and when you roll your cursor over each color, its hexadecimal equivalent will appear in the status line below.

Unsafe Colors
Although we recommend using the safe palette whenever possible, it can be restrictive because it has so few colors available. If you are uncertain about the browsers and platforms of your internet audience, but still interested in using unsafe color, you should test the colors for dithering* at lower resolutions. To do this, set your monitor resolution to 256 colors. If the color dithers* or shifts**, you might find that the color is not what you expected. Ideally, you should test your work on several other computers at a variety of resolutions and with different browsers. Our policy is to test all designs using both Mac & PC platforms with Internet Explorer and Netscape versions 4.0 and higher. Other browser profiling is available by customer request.

*Dithering is what happens when a color does not fit into the web-safe palette and the computer must make do by mixing several other colors. Typically this is done by choosing two (or more) web-safe colors that when mixed together would produce the color in question by alternating the pixel colors. Because the pixels are so small and close together, our eyes see the original color (if you don't look too closely). See Below.

**Shifting is what happens when a color does not fit into the web-safe palette and your computer chooses the closest match.