How important is it to only use 'web safe colours' when you're designing a page?

Answer 1

It isn't even remotely important. Web safe colours restricts you to a palette of only 256 colours, which equates to 8 bit colour depth.

According to the w3 schools website, only 3% of users nowadays have 8 bit colour devices - http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

I also just checked the stats for one of my sites, just out of interest. From 74,124 total visitors, not one has less than 16 bit colour.

For the tiny minority that can only see web safe colour, as others have pointed out the colours will be 'rounded' up or down to the closest available.

Answer 2

Extremely important!

If you want your web page to be seen by everyone on the Internet, then you have to accommodate every system. The safe web colors will help you achieve that goal. If parts of a web page cannot be seen, the reader will pass on it and will go on to another page. Not good if you are trying to market a product.

http://www.scotlandsoftware.com/learn/html/index.html#colours

Answer 3

I think using web safe colors is usually over rated. While there are some exceptions such as logos where you want the exact color to be used each and every time, the shifting of the color to the nearest supported color is not going to make a heck of a lot of difference in the majority of cases.

Answer 4

The best way to handle this if you're using backgrounds is to create a 10 pixel by 10 pixel image of the color you want and use that as the background. It will indefinately repeat and you won't have to worry about color standards. As far as text goes, keep it simple. The 256 colors available should be more than plenty to facilitate your needs.

As far as logos go, whatever you use will work fine. Nowadays, I don't think the color sensitivity is near as severe as it was several years back. Technology moves fast.

Answer 5

If you don't, you can't be sure how your page will look in the browser. Colors will be rounded to the nearest Web-safe values, and sometimes a smooth gradation can be turned into a series of bands of almost-the-same color.

Answer 6

Not very important these days. Most computers today can display just about any color. Also, even if they don't, the next closest one will generally be good enough (unless you are using colors that are very close together.)