MARKETING IDEAS and TOOLS
Business Card Design Ideas
Brochure Design Ideas
Die Cut Business Cards
Scented Business Cards
Cheap Business Card Ideas
Unique Business Cards
Unique Brochure Ideas
Cheap Advertising Ideas
Business Card Layout
Promoting a Home Based Biz
Competitive Advantage
Email Marketing Tips
3 Ways To Spend Less
Selling With Color
Promotional Magnets
MARKETING STRATEGIES
Differentiate Yourself
Information Marketing
Building Customer Loyalty
Getting Customer Feedback
Testimonials
How to Define a Niche
Discovering Niches
Finding New Customers
Indirect Benefits
The Consumer's Perspective
Promotional Marketing
Pricing Products and Services
Viral Marketing Magic
Marketing Mix
STARTUP IDEAS and STRATEGIES
Home-Based Startup Ideas
Business Idea Brainstorming
Virtual Assistant
Internet Researcher
Event Planner
Wedding Consultant
Telecommuting Strategies
Freelance Job Strategies
WEBSITE MARKETING
Build Traffic to Your Website
Domain Name Ideas
5 Ways to Increase Traffic
Scavenger Hunts
Talking Avatars
Promote Your Web Page
Autoresponders
Internal Links
Link Exchange Tips
Viral Marketing and Email
Attract Your Target Market
Market Your Website Offline
KEYWORD TIPS
Keyword Competition
Keywords and Meta Tags
Prime Spots for Keywords
Keyword Phrases
AFFILIATE MARKETING
How To Get Started
Residual Income
Affiliate Agreements
ONLINE BASICS
Choosing Domain Names
Domain Name Extensions
Website Design Strategies
Learning HTML
Understanding HTML Colors
Are Your Colors Web-Safe?
How to Accept Payments
Bandwidth: Doing The Math
Find The Right Web Host
Publish Your Website
MARKETING YOURSELF
Resume Tips
HTML Colors: Are Yours Web-Safe?
When selecting colors for your website, it's better to be web-safe than sorry.It may be technically possible to create millions of colors in HTML, but not all monitors will display what you have envisioned.
Millions of colors require computer memory. While most computers used to access the Internet are now capable of displaying over sixteen million colors, some are set to display only thousands.
A very small portion of web users are looking at colors using a mere 216-color palette. (The palette is actually 256 colors, but forty of those colors are not used because of incompatibility between PCs and Macs.)
In the past, those users numbered high enough to warrant using a limited palette.
Today, the number of monitors set to display 256 colors is very small. For that reason, the trend is going from web-safe to a reasonable safe, but very expanded palette of 4096 colors.
From web-safe to risky, the color options for website design are a 216-color, a 4096-color and a whopping 16,777,216-color palette.
The web-safe palette of 216 colors is made up of six degrees each of red, green and blue. Six reds multiplied by six greens mulitplied by six blues yields the 256 colors.
With sixteen times more color choices than the 216-color palette, the 4096-color palette is a reasonably safe alternative.
This palette contains sixteen values each of red, green and blue. Sixteen reds multiplied by sixteen greens, multiplied by sixteen blues yields a total palette of 4096 colors.
Just be aware that a small (probably a very small) percentage of your website visitors will view your site with a monitor set to 256 colors.
With a font, text or background color not included in those 256, the nearest color will be substituted.
Using the 16-million plus color palette is risky, and probably not worth it. For obvious reasons, there isn't a complete chart available for this palette. Not even close!
However, you'll find these colors in charts all over the web.
Here's how to tell what's safe, and what you might want to avoid:
HTML color codes that are compatible for the monitors set to thousands of colors or greater (and that's most of us) come in three pairs, each pair having the same letter or number.
For example, FF0033 is a shade of red and is from the web-safe palette. Any code that varies from this pattern of pairs will yield a color that can only be viewed using a monitor set to millions of colors.
Every HTML color code is composed of six digits. Some are numbers; others are letters.
If the code has three pairs of digits with each pair containing the same number or letter, you're safe if your website is viewed using a monitor set to thousands of colors, or higher. That's almost everybody.
If the code only contains pairs of 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, and FF, you're as safe as you can be.
Nancy Richardson
CreateYourMarket.com publisher
Need a writer?
Quick Tips:
Enclose a business card promoting your website with each piece of outgoing mail.
Ask customers who frequently do business with you for a testimonial.
Promote your website URL offline on everything from bumper stickers to your answering machine message.
Want to reach the highest percentage of your target market?
Advertise in specialty publications including newspaper supplements devoted to a specific topic.
Marketing is crucial, but it doesn't always have to be serious.
Some of the most effective advertising campaigns rely on humor. Don't be afraid to make your customers laugh!