Hexadecimal-Based HTML

Web page color schemes are generally chosen by using hexadecimal values instead of embedded artwork. If you choose one color background on your millions-of-color monitor and the end user views the image on a 256-color monitor, the browser will convert it to one of the 216 colors anyway. It will shift the colors you've chosen to its own palette.

Browser-safe colors are mathematically generated. The palette is often called the 6x6x6 cube, because it is composed of six different values (lights and darks) for each of the six computer colors, red, yellow, blue, green, magenta and cyan. Browser safe colors in RGB range from the following six numbers: 00, 51, 102, 153, 204, 255. The hexadecimal translation of this is 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, FF. This means, that any combination of these numbers will create browser-safe, cross-platform compatible colors.

Many dedicated HTML editors, such as Claris Home page, BBEdit and Adobe Pagemill use the Apple RGB color picker by default. You will need to use percentages instead of RGB or HEX in these programs.

Here's a handy chart to calculate browser-safe RGB, Hex, and Percentages.

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