Many web designers overlook the importance of color when designing a web site. Color should be one of your first concerns when it comes time to start your web site design. If you don't pay close attention to the colors you chose, your site you will end up either plain and boring or so chaotic it's hard to look at. The color you use should only be chosen after careful consideration.

Unfortunately web browsers can only see 256 colors. Even that number is hindered because all browsers don't share the same 256-color pallet. Currently web browsers only share 216 common colors. When designing key elements in your web site you should stay within the 216-color pallet.

If you go outside the 216 color pallet you start to use colors that do not exist within that browser. The browser has to mix the colors that do not exist. In order for the browser to display the color, it needs to take tiny dots from the colors native to that browser to come up with an approximate color. This is known as dithering. Some displays will distort the tiny dots to the point where the image is so speckled that it does not appear to be a solid color. This makes text very hard to read if it is placed over the dithered color. You should always use a browser safe color when using solid color as a design element. Some of the browser safe colors should be used with caution though.

ripped from: http://www.pageresource.com/zine/webcolors.htm

LOL,

Yet another ripped article. Creek, what are you? some kind of googler? LOL

Anyways, back in the dark ages of web dev, going beyond the 216 color pallette was a concern. These days, and I am not saying this to endorse going outside the web-safe pallette, with modern browsers, this isn't much of a concern, just like conserving memory isn't a concern for software writers.

Go beyond web-safe at will, just don't abuse it.

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Webmasters of Africa unite!!! http://www.webmastersofafrica.com

LOL -- hmmm; it looks like Jamesbond just grabs everything from Google and can't come up with anything original -- I've seen creek23 rip alot of his stuff in numerous threads!

Yeah; don't abuse the approved colors, because if not coded properly, your site won't validate -- however, I always use Hype's Color Specifier to see what the color actually looks like, and to get the correct corresponding HTML code.