TIP 68: Picking Web Safe Colors

If picking Web safe colors is important to you, GoLive makes it very easy to do just that. The easiest way is to choose colors from the VisiBone, VisiBone2, Web Hues, Web Safe, or Web Spectrum swatch sets in the Swatches palette (Figure 68a).

Figure 68a. Several of the swatch sets show only Web safe colors.

Are Web Safe Colors Necessary?

In the early days of the Web, most computer monitors could only display 256 colors. This meant Web designers tried to limit their color usage to the 216 Web safe colors so they wouldn't have any unexpected dithering in their graphics. Computer monitors and graphics cards have come a long way over the years and now usually display thousands or millions of colors. This means it's probably not necessary to limit your color palette to Web safe colors anymore.

Another way to make sure you select a Web safe color swatch is to turn on the Small List View option in the Swatches palette and only select colors with the small cube icon next to them (Figure 68b). Lastly, you can turn on the Web Colors Only option in the Color palette menu and you can mix colors with any of the familiar color mixers and be confident you'll only get Web safe colors.

Figure 68b. Swatches that have the cube icon next to them in the list view are Web safe.