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I still remember one of my high school teachers lecturing us about the "web safe colors". A set of 216-256 colors that you should confine your designs to use, and nothing else besides them. Last I knew, Photoshop still has the "web safe" yield icon1 on it's color picker.

Are web safe colors still a concern? Outside of the obvious application (accessibility, legacy software versions, etc.), how much consideration should I give to limiting my color choice for my general audience?

1Or was it the cube? I never remember.

VxJasonxV
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No, they're not. Fewer than 1% of Internet users are now on the 8-bit displays that made them necessary.

Mike Scott
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  • This was seriously born out of 8-bit displays? I don't think I've even used an 8-bit display since I've done web work, to the best of my knowledge anyway... [edit] I guess the math does add up, that 8-bit = 256 colors with some reserved = 216 "safe". Really? Yuck. – VxJasonxV Feb 24 '11 at 07:25
  • I do remember the times when people had 256 colors in their desktop unless they were be "tech savy" and set "hi color", 16bits... in '96 it happened yet in quite some computers. – S.gfx Feb 24 '11 at 08:56
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    Yes, it really derives from 8-bit displays, which were very common in the 1990s. See the Wikipedia article for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors#Web-safe_colors – Mike Scott Feb 24 '11 at 09:29
  • Hey don't forget the Green Screen Monitors :-) not sure how well Web Safe would have gone with them - I guess just 216 safe shades of Green... nice!! – Rob Feb 24 '11 at 11:47
  • The sad part of this: I was taught Web Safe Colors in the 2000's... – VxJasonxV Feb 27 '11 at 07:04
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    some things really should just be scrubbed from collective memory, web safe colors is one of them. Google reveals that FAR too many people (pretend to?) care about this non-issue. – Drew Mar 03 '11 at 07:35
  • Once had to tell someone to forget using their system for the Internet when they were trying to view my website and they couldn't figure out why they couldn't see anything in our navigation system. 16 color VGA with dithering just couldn't make sense of things... Websafe has gone the way of the Dinosaur. Birds do unlimited color and fly. – Fiasco Labs Feb 04 '13 at 06:00