Web Design

104

Understanding Color on the Web .............................

C

olor is an important part of any design. Choosing the right color scheme for your site can have

a huge impact on the mood, look, and feel of your site. Take a look at some of your favorite

Web sites and think about the impact of color on your impression of the sites. Bright colors usually

convey a lighter, happier sense than dark colors, but depending on the purpose of the site, either

might be appropriate. In order to effectively use color, you need to have an understanding of how

color works on the Web.

RGB

Computer monitors generate color by combining red, green, and blue light,

and are thus known as RGB devices. Each color is expressed numerically,

with values ranging from 0 to 255. Therefore, you can express purple as

rgb(128,0,128) — 128 of red, no green, and 128 blue.

Hexadecimal

Hexadecimal is a counting system that uses 16 primary digits,

rather than the 10 you are used to. The additional 6 digits are

represented by the first 6 letters of the English alphabet, A

through F. Hexadecimal allows you to count from 0 to 255

using only 2 digits rather than 3, and is thus useful for color

values. Purple is expressed in hexadecimal as #800080.

#800080

Named Colors

The official specification identifies 16 named colors for the Web: aqua,

black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red,

silver, teal, white, and yellow. In practice, however, all modern browsers

recognize 140 named colors. You can view a list of all of the colors in the

appendix.

16

officialnamed

colors

aqua

black

fuchsiablue

gray

green

lime

maroon

navy

olive

purple

red

silverteal

white

yellow