Statistics and trends in browser usage, operating systems and screen resolution.
Older computers and laptops often use 16 bits display hardware. This gives a maximum of 65,536 different colors.
Handheld computers and very old computers often use 8 bits color hardware. This gives a maximum of 256 colors.
This 216 cross platform web safe color palette was originally created to ensure that all computers in particular macintosh and PC computers, would display all colors correctly when running a 256 color palette.
Unless your website is targeting hand helds or very old computers it is probably not important to design for a 256 display, since more and more computers are equipped with the ability to display millions of different colors.
Screen Resolution
More and more computers are using a screen size of 1024x768 pixels or more though many users still have only 800x600 display screens.Zeald.com recommend that websites are designed to fit an 800 x 600 pixel browser because this is the smallest size that is still used by a significant number of internet users. This means that users with an 800 x 600 resolution monitors can view the content of a web page page without having to scroll the content horizontally, which is not an action web users are familiar with.
The 100% width setting
is an alternate option however we do not recommend this for the following reasons:
- banner graphics cannot be designed to fit the full width because the width is variable and image dimensions are 'hard coded'
- Text set to display 100% on a 'wide screen' exceeds the 7-10 word readability limit. Usability studies show that blocks of text become difficult to read when displayed in long horizontal strings that exceed 7-10 words.
Color Depth
Most computers use 24 or 32 bits hardware to display 16,777,216 different colors:Older computers and laptops often use 16 bits display hardware. This gives a maximum of 65,536 different colors.
Handheld computers and very old computers often use 8 bits color hardware. This gives a maximum of 256 colors.
Web Safe Colors
A few years ago, when most computers supported only 256 different colors, a list of 216 Web Safe Colors was suggested as a Web standard.This 216 cross platform web safe color palette was originally created to ensure that all computers in particular macintosh and PC computers, would display all colors correctly when running a 256 color palette.
Unless your website is targeting hand helds or very old computers it is probably not important to design for a 256 display, since more and more computers are equipped with the ability to display millions of different colors.
 Example image - GIF: 256 colours (14kb) |
 Example image - Websafe GIF: 216 colours (14kb) |
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