[colour chart]
What exactly are web safe colours?
Web safe colours are the colours used within Mosaic, Netscape, and Internet Explorer browsers and are based on maths. The colours used by these browsers are slightly different on Macs and PC's. Because of this slight difference, the web safe palette only consists of 216 colors out of a possible 256. The 40 missing colors vary on Macs and PC's, so by eliminating those, the web safe palette is optimized for cross-platform use.
Having said all that, designing web sites using strictly web safe colours is no longer considered as important as it once was. With the devlopment of modern technology, there are very few 256 colour monitors still in use today and the more up to date monitors support anything from thousands to millions of colours.
From a designers point of view, being able to play with such a vast array of colours makes our work even more exciting and gives us the ability to create new and fresh designs. However, trying to create colour schemes from such a huge range of colours is not something that most people can just do in their head or by looking at a shade chart.
Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of desktop applications that have been developed for this purpose.
Color Schemer
Color Schemer is an excellent little utility that I have been using for a while now. it has recently been upgraded to Version 3 and has some useful tools such as automatically copying a hex value to your clipboard either with or without the # depending on what you need - great if you are working with both PhotoShop and a text editor at the same time!
Color Schemer Studio
Color Schemer Studio is the next step up from Color Schemer and since I puchased this little gem a few months ago, I have never done a single design job without using it! It really is a fantastic little tool and I know I haven't really put it through it's paces yet. This one definitely gets the Dax Approval!
Color Wheel Pro
Color Wheel Pro is a unique software program that allows you to see color theory in action. With Color Wheel Pro, you can create harmonious color schemes and preview them on real-world examples. It is a a tool I would not want missing from my desktop!
Colour Charts
Having a web safe colour chart around can still be very handy which is why I have arranged my web safe colour chart by hue - each colour carries it's own unique HEX and RGB values for coding purposes, too.