February 2006
Intermediate to advanced
826 pages
63h 42m
English
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The Web Palette
Web browsers running on 8-bit monitors reduce and remap colors to their own built-in palette known as the web palette . It is also known as the web-safe palette, browser-safe palette, non-dithering palette, the Netscape palette, and the 6 × 6 × 6 cube.
The web palette consists of the 216 colors shared by the Macintosh and Windows system palettes; therefore, theoretically, colors chosen from the web palette render accurately on Mac or Windows displays. The web palette was optimized for Macs and Windows; Unix machines use a different color model for their system palette , so “web-safe” colors may still shift or dither when viewed on Unix systems.
The remaining 40 colors that make up the difference between the 216 browser colors and the maximum 256 palette colors are taken from the system palette.
Tip
You can see samples of all 216 colors online at http://www.learningwebdesign.com/webpalette.html.