Web Safe Colors

People that use the internet are generally using either a PC or a MAC home computer. Even though the web interface is standardized, the hardware and software on the surfer's home computer is not. In other words, they are truly all personal computers. Among the myriad of individual differences in home computers, the color palette is of prime concern to web developers.

The palette is the group of colors that may be displayed on a particular computer. One computer may be configured for millions of colors, another for only sixteen. To make matters worse, between MACs and PCs the color representations can be quite different. In order to be web safe, i.e. to know that a color coded on a webpage will display in a fairly consistent manner on different machines, the choice of colors in a webpage should come from the palette of color representations common to both types of machines.

'Web safe' means 'web consistent'.